A Dead World
by Laluzi
Summary: He had been captured; Alex Mercer knew that much was obvious. But if that was the case, why had his captors just left him there without security? How had he ended up in a bunker buried in some kind of giant desert? Where was everyone? And when the hell did bottlecaps become currency?
1. Awakening

Life in Vault 20, David Mordin knew, was good.

All right, so there was always a sense of monotony when one's entire world covered about a hundred thousand square feet at the highest estimate. That was a given. But after all the horror stories he'd heard of the world outside, he had no desire to expand that ground. Here, he had friends, food, a home – none of that was worth giving up on a mad whim to explore the certain desolation outside. Not that any of those crazy enough to want to could try – the Vault had sealed them all inside until conditions outside were deemed livable.

And now the twenty-seven-year-old man was going to witness something every dweller of Vault 20, both past and present, would have given anything to see. Hell, he'd taken on extra shifts for a month just to ensure that he and his wife had spaces in the front row of seats.

The assembly room was nearing full capacity. How a few hundred people could fit in here, he had no idea, but children were being relegated to parents' laps to open seats for adults, and plenty of floor spaces were occupied with vault-dwellers, all animatedly discussing and speculating what was about to happen.

Valeria Mordin was practically vibrating with excitement at his side. "I can't believe it's finally here!"

He smiled and stroked her hair. "Me too, love."

"Oh, but can you imagine? They say this is something we'll be telling our children about, and they to theirs." She laid a hand on her belly, gently feeling for the young life within. "I just can't believe it's finally, finally here. Everyone's been dreaming of this for two hundred years. Two hundred! I wonder what it could be?"

"I know, darling. No matter what this is, I'm sure it's a day no one will forget…"

He leaned back, humming to himself as he took in the wild speculation around him. Valeria was having an animated discussion with the man next to her, somebody he recognized from the control room. Her face was lovely when she smiled - excitement glittered in her eyes like stars. If not for propriety, he'd have swept her up in his arms and captured that perfect expression in a kiss...

It seemed like hours until the last straggler was accounted for. Whoever it was, they were going to get an earful later for holding things up. This was no mere sporting affair or entertainment night; this was the event of a lifetime. An expectant hush fell upon the crowd as the lights dimmed and all but the emergency exits slid shut.

The mainframe's screen lit up, revealing a picture of a smiling face and a neatly wrapped present.

"Good day, ladies and gentlemen!" boomed the mainframe in a cheery voice. "And it IS a good day! When Vault 20 was created, it had YOU in mind! When your ancestors first packed their things for our lovely home, they were informed that this vault was _special_ – that in two hundred years, a wonderful gift would commemorate two centuries of successful living."

There was a certain amount of theatrics involved with such an event, and Vault 20's residents were happy to let themselves get swept up in it. Underneath the screen, a faint whirring was steadily increasing in volume. Renewed whispers ran through the crowd – something was happening, they knew it!

"This gift is not _just_ a gift – it's a one-of-a-kind opportunity, and YOU are the lucky generation to receive it! What happens today will change your lives! So thank you for making our vault your home for two hundred years, and here's to two hundred more!"

The platform beneath the mainframe was opening. A few shocked exclamations went up as those sitting on the floor were forced to scramble back, but everyone else was leaning forward with bated breath. What would this life-changing gift be? This was it, the great reveal –

And like any good stage event, it announced itself. Something was rising from the ground, the top of a large cylinder accompanied by a wreath of vapor. Oohs and aahs emerged from the crowd as the entire container surfaced; when it had fully emerged, the floor slid neatly back into place under it. It was constructed from something clear, but the hazy steam around it prevented anyone from getting a good look.

As the dry ice cleared, people began to notice the silhouette of something dark near the bottom. Even in the light, it was black. Black, streaked with veins of red.

Nobody knew what to expect from today, but even then, this… was not what anyone had expected. Excited whispers changed to curious mutters. David chanced a look at Valeria; his wife was frowning. He squeezed her hand.

"Everything's going to be fine," he murmured to her. "The vault was built by professionals. Everything's safe."

"I know," she whispered back. "But what _is_ that stuff? It looks so…"

She trailed off. With a sucking sound, the front of the cylinder fell away, and warm air rushed inside. Patterns of frost and steam danced and wavered on the glasslike walls, and the people nearest to the presentation shuddered at the sudden gust of cold air.

The effect was immediate. The dark blob shivered once, as if sensing the heat. More murmurs went through the crowd, these ones just a hint uneasy, as it began to ooze, crawling out of the cylinder's opening and onto the warmer ground outside.

"Ergh," the man next to Valeria grunted. "What _is _that?"

Nobody knew. They watched as it shuddered, pulling against itself as if it were something alive. They gasped when it began to pull itself upright, then into a _shape_ – an unmistakable shape, the skeleton of a human. The whispers rose again and then fell, and the chamber echoed with sucking and popping noises as the goo rearranged itself. And there was silence for a few shivering moments as they took in what the creature had become.

It was… almost a person. Or a shadow of one. It had no skin, no features – it was black, with streaks of red slithering around its torso, its limbs, its head. Larger red patches would split open on its surface occasionally, only to be painstakingly stitched back by the blackness. But the shape was off. It was emaciated, nearly skeletal. Its fingers were long – far too long, and tapered at the ends. The only discernible features were on its face… or where a face should have been. Blank but for two eyes; two empty, icy eyes that roved across the room.

Then it roared.

Leapt.

Tore.

There was blood.

David Mordin screamed.

0o0o0

Cold. He was so cold.

He blinked, then shut his eyes tightly against the sudden onslaught of light. It was like staring directly at the sun from about two feet away. Except worse. Some corner of his mind whispered something about hangovers, but as always, he let the thoughts drift over his head and out of sight without resistance.

He tried to open his eyes again, more carefully this time. It was bright, still, but it faded into a more moderate kind of bright the more he endured it. And if he tilted his head down a shade, everything went dark.

He tasted dirt against his lips and spat it out, rolling to the side. Light again. And a bit of pain, too.

He shrugged his shoulders experimentally, then winced at the sharp ache it caused. Okay. So he was on a floor somewhere, and in pretty bad shape if anything was actually hurting him. This wasn't the first time it had happened, although it had been a few years since the terrible night that had seen him born. At least he wasn't weak and helpless this time, although he wasn't feeling too strong or confident either. He forced his thoughts into order. First line of business, figure out where he was.

It took him a few tries to get to his feet. Everything was spinning, and he couldn't really do much until he knew where the floor was.

The sense of dizziness remained even after he managed to get upright. He fixed his eyes on the floor and waited for his jeans to stop swimming.

It took him a minute to realize that his legs were trembling.

What the hell.

He sighed. He could heal himself later. Preferably sooner. There had to be somebody around he could use. For now, he had to figure out what the hell was going on before anything worse happened. A quick glance upward showed that the bright light that had bothered him so much radiated from ceiling strips. His eyes travelled down. The walls were metal. The floor was metal, too, as were the strangely shaped doors farther down the hall. Some kind of facility?

He took a step and staggered. He was so dizzy… his head swam with nausea. He smelled fresh blood, but there was no life here, no breath – where was everyone? His vision blurred as he recalibrated his eyes to see heat signatures. There were outlines of machinery and their engines, he could see those through the walls, but he detected nothing that looked even vaguely like a person.

Screwing with his vision was only making his headache worse, so he let everything slip back into color. The air was stale and sterile, and did little to clear his head. The last thing he remembered was… pain. An impression of intense pain, like being burned away, and then –

Dana! Where was Dana?

If he'd had a working heart, his chest might have exploded with how fast it would have started pounding. Where was his sister? If he'd somehow been incapacitated, then where was she? Was she safe? Had Blackwatch found her? He couldn't remember… had she even been involved when he'd been rendered unconscious? He didn't know, and unease gnawed at the corners of his mind. If she had gotten hurt because of him, he would never forgive himself.

He tried to walk again. His gait eventually evened out, but he still stumbled from time to time, bracing himself against the walls when needed. Why did he feel so weak? How had he gotten here? Why couldn't he remember?

He found a few rooms – they looked like dormitories, strangely enough. Here, he discovered items. Planters, empty bottles, jumpsuits with the number 20 emblazoned on their backs… old books, a crib, a teddy bear… The day Blackwatch let a teddy bear into one of their bases was the day he started doing community service, so that ruled them out. Maybe. Who else could have possibly captured him?

He wasn't used to this kind of stuff. No weapon racks, no chemical cocktails or spare parts… just common junk. Stuff he'd find lying around Dana's apartment. This looked utterly civilian. But then what was he doing here?

There were computers, too; bulky, old models he only knew from vague memories. Maybe they would provide some clues…? But they were password-encrypted and his head was a fuzzy mess, so he left them where they were and went back out into the corridor.

Twists, turns, the echo of heavy footsteps on metal, fluorescent lights. The pounding in his head. It was all jumbled into a disorienting rhythm. Step, ache, breathe. Stairs. That was something new. He hauled himself up each set, dimly aware that _up_ meant _freedom_. Was he underground? There were no windows, no matter how many flights he took…

His awareness sharpened when he crested the final staircase and the layout finally changed. Up until this point, there had been narrow corridors with various rooms branching out from the sides. Now there was a wide room with a half-sublevel, full of machinery and wires… and at the very end, a door.

The door was shaped like a giant gear, and from the way it failed to react to a massive push, weighed at least several tons. And as far as he could see, there was no way to open it. Maybe it was connected to some of this machinery, but he didn't know how to use it and _oh god_ his head was killing him…

Animal desperation clawed at his gut. He wasn't going to be trapped here!

With a roar, he braced himself against it and forced the massive thing aside… or he tried to. No avail. He was too weak, too dizzy… it didn't even budge. With a moan, he slumped against the wall and buried his face in his hands. He felt so sick… was he going to die here?

A mechanical voice came from somewhere on the ceiling, and his head snapped up. And maybe it was his head spinning, but it sounded perversely cheerful.

"Please step away from the door, vault-dweller. You don't want to go outside! Radiation levels are deemed HIGH. Your life is in much better hands here at Vault 20! If you're feeling as though you just want to end it all, please see the med bay on Sublevel 2 for some helpful suggestions on what you can do with your life. Thank you, and have a nice day!"

He blinked, but before he could try to process what he'd just heard, another clip played. "Cross-referencing with Vault 20 project… status is activated. Subject has been released. Running check. Radiation levels are deemed MINIMAL. Project is considered complete. Vault 20 programs shutting down. Congratulations, you're free to go!"

Project? Subject? What the hell was it talking about? The words mattered for about three seconds and were then utterly forgotten, because the lights were fading and _the door was rolling aside._

Scarcely daring to believe his luck, Alex Mercer stood up…

…and took his first few breaths of a dead world.

* * *

[Achievement Unlocked! **Awakening **(5pts) –_You have no idea where you are, how you got there, or why any of this is happening. Tastes like a storyline._]


	2. A Taste of the Wasteland

It did not take long for Alex Mercer to realize he was not in New York City anymore.

'Not long' consisted of about two seconds. One to blink and another to let his jaw drop at the sight before him.

Sand. Sand and rock. A dusty expanse that stretched out as far as his keen eyes could see. He stood in a chasm, a natural corridor of rock that stretched up on both of his sides. Behind him was that cramped, unsettling bunker that he had awakened in, and ahead… a wasteland.

He'd lived his whole life among towering skyscrapers and neon lights – no wasted space, no empty ground. Everything within the walls of the bay had been saturated with the pulse of human life, spiking towards the sky in an uneven canopy in an attempt to create room for the throbbing mass of people that seemed to flock to the city like moths to a light. There was Central Park, of course, but any illusion of being away from the city was shattered by the screech of car horns and the constant crowds struggling through. Never before had he seen such a vast expanse of _nothingness_. There was the ground, a tannish mix of sand and rock. Cliff walls, a deeper and less faded brown. The occasional stone, jutting up from the dust like a snaggled tooth. And then there was the sky, a tired blue plane punctured by a bright sun.

Back in Manhattan, he'd often cursed the endless crowds under his breath, wishing for space and openness that the city could never provide. Now, watching the wind tug trailing motes of sand up from the dusty ground, he felt a strange sense of discomfiture. Too open. Too alien.

There was nobody here.

He shivered despite himself. No prey for regeneration, no anonymous faces to hide behind. No shelter from assault. Just himself and the languid breeze.

Of course, that meant that nobody was _around_ to hurt him, so he could do himself a favor and chill the fuck out already. He sighed. Alex did not like being confused. Knowledge was power, and the only way he could stop it from being used against him was to have it all. Being left without the full picture of events always left him frustrated and edgy. But panicking over nothing was pathetic. He could do better than that.

…He still didn't like being out in the open. _Damn it_. He guessed he could get used to empty space, but he'd never liked being noticeable. Tended to happen to a person when being noticed meant anything from obnoxious points and whispers to a battalion of tanks and elite air support coming after your ass. There was nowhere to hide out here, and nothing to divert attention from him. For all the various ways they pissed him off, at least Manhattan's crowds had served a purpose.

But it wasn't like he had a choice. If some enemy had placed him in that bunker, then it was in his best interests to get as far away from it as possible, in case… something. He frowned. Why _had_ he just been left in a desolate facility? He would have expected some measure of containment, or an attempt to kill him – firing squads, chemical cocktails, poisons, hell, maybe another nuclear device. He wouldn't put it past Blackwatch. But nothing? The place _had_ been sealed, but then it had let him out without question. It made no sense.

He tried to remember something, _any_ snip of information or uncovered recollection, but trying to poke around brought on another wave of nausea and aching weakness. It was like somebody had taken a giant mixing spoon and swirled all of his memories into a jumbled, churning mess.

Information or not, it didn't seem like a good idea to stay in the bunker. There was nothing to eat down there, and the fresh air outside felt good to breathe in, even if it tasted like dust and grit rather than the tang of pollutants he'd grown used to over the years.

That weakened feeling was fading. Maybe it was the sunlight and fresh air, or maybe it was his body patching up whatever damage he'd suffered. It didn't matter. Looking over the endless landscape, the viral abomination felt his muscles coil with a burning desire to _run_.

It felt great – the remaining lethargy was swept away in a rush of wind and primal joy. Running through the wastes felt weird – it wasn't pure sand, like he'd thought, but a layer of fine dust and dirt over rock. But even though it gave under his feet more than concrete and asphalt ever had, it was difficult not to enjoy.

He could have used a few more rooftops to leap across, but the sheer freedom felt good. Enough to keep his mind off of important things for a few minutes, anyway. After that, he was all business, keen eyes raking the passing desert for any signs of life.

There were none.

There was nothing alive here.

If he was completely honest with himself, he'd have admitted that he was unsettled. Instead, though, he scowled and pressed himself harder. The complete lack of anything noteworthy went on for a damn long time. He stopped once, finding what turned out to be a half-buried human skeleton and a sand-worn pack. More out of curiosity than anything else, he had checked out the guy's supplies. A wallet might have an ID, and that had a chance of telling him where he was. At least, he had to have a map... but there was nothing of note. Instead, he found some unused scraps of paper and a pistol, which he tossed aside. If it couldn't pierce a tank's hull, he didn't want it. A bit deeper, there was… what the hell?

He picked up the pack and upturned it, just to confirm what he was seeing. Yeah. Glinting in the sunlight was what looked like a collection of bottlecaps. He shook his head in disbelief. _People_. Dana had told him about hobbies once. He'd tried his best to understand, but the notion didn't make much sense to him. Why the hell would somebody carry a bunch of junk around instead of something useful? And what was the point of this collection anyway? They all looked the same to him.

Besides an apparent bottlecap-collector on a suicide voyage into the ass end of nowhere, a couple hours passed without any change in scenery, and that was worrisome. There was nothing loud enough to hear over the roar of the wind in his ears, but he wasn't interested in bugs and wildlife anyway – he wanted civilization. Or something big enough for dinner, anyway.

He revised the thought about bugs when he collided with something black, orange, and definitely organic.

He screeched to a stop, kicking up a plume of sand. There was nothing left of whatever he'd hit; just a distasteful smear on his jacket. He frowned, wiping it off with one hand while looking around. Something was buzzing… it was a muffled whine, faintly reminiscent of a distant helicopter's rotor. But the sky was empty but for a wisp of cloud and the burning sun.

He got his answer when he checked behind him. There were several fast-moving blurs zipping across the rocks in erratic patterns, quickly enough for him to waste a few seconds trying to figure out what they were.

He lost another second in slack-jawed disbelief once he finally made them out.

Giant wasps. _Giant _giant wasps. There were five of the bastards, black things with bright orange wings and bulbous eyes. And while the extent of any wildlife he'd ever seen didn't reach anything stranger than a stray cat, he _had_ eaten people that watched Animal Planet, and as far as he knew, wasps the size of large dogs were a stretch even for… Africa, or something.

His fingers were halfway through the process of becoming claws when the first one impacted. It wasn't heavy enough to do more than stagger him, but almost instantly afterward, there was a stinger buried in his gut.

Alex swiped at the bug, but it had already flitted away, well out of range from his talons. Since when was anything fast enough to dodge _him_? Hell, he could target a streamlined helicopter with a highly trained pilot inside and snap-kick it out of the air. And then bounce off of its burning wreck and launch his foot into its partner, if it had one.

He leaned forward to dash into pursuit when he became aware of a sharp pain in his stomach. He glanced down, eyes widening. An angry red weal was spreading across his belly, standing out sharply against the grey material of his sweater. Biomass writhed and coiled around the edges of the expanding sore, each tendril a little prick of fire as it was melted away. _Shit_. These things were more dangerous than he'd thought.

Steeling himself, he ran a claw through the front of his shirt, carving off the poisoned area before it could spread further. After Blackwatch's parasite, he took no chances with foreign toxins.

He felt rather than saw another wasp darting at him, and he dropped to the sand, barely evading its pass. As he did so, dark, chitinous plates crawled over his vulnerable skin.

_Let's see them pierce this._

Three of them were on him now, but he'd been right; their stingers crumpled against his armor like a butter knife would to a tank. He managed to nail one with a wild swipe, crushing it underfoot when it fell, but the others managed to retreat, hovering a safe distance away with the last two.

If his armor had possessed facial features, he would have frowned. They were too fast. His claws were the quickest weapons at his disposal, unless… His right arm bunched up into a tightly-wound coil, claws melting into three smaller, hooked barbs.

He drew it back. When the next rush came – all four this time, perfect – he swung his whip to the side, letting its momentum pull him around in a full circle.

A second later, a series of wet _slop_s hit the ground, in the form of bisected mutant wasps.

And _still_, one had gotten away! They were… well, they sort of moved like himself, except with wings. He scowled and snatched the last nuisance out of the air, reeling it back to him within the second. It was an ugly thing – how the hell did those wings carry such a bloated body? He wasn't really in any place to question how, given his own track record of kicking physics in the balls and tying it to a flagpole with its own boxers, but it didn't seem possible. And how had it gotten so damn big in the first place?

He glanced at the struggling, half-crushed bug in his grip. He could feel the tentacles wriggling inside, yearning to break through his skin.

Well, why not?

He regretted it. Oh _hell_ he regretted it. He wasn't sure if it was the poison, trying to consume something so far from a human, or something else, but his body had something against this abomination of nature and it was _letting him know it_.

He doubled over almost immediately, palms flat against the warm sand as he gasped for breath. Every inch of him below his neck was heaving. His tentacles were thrashing wildly, his biomass churning as it forced out its latest addition. With how quickly he assimilated new mass into his whole, his body ended up flushing a good bit of what he already had.

It dimly reminded him of that time he'd looked after Dana when she caught the flu. Except with her, there had been more throwing up and less of her whole body messily rearranging itself. Roughly the same feeling, though, if her complaints had been anything to go by. Shit, if this was what being sick was like, he was glad he wasn't human.

At last, the violent reaction trailed off, and he regained enough control of his shape to pull back the tendrils and shift back into his clothes. A few more seconds and he was able to stand, if not a bit shakily. He glanced down at the puddle of half-dissolved wasp and grimaced.

Ergh. Okay. Living in New York hadn't really lent him much opportunity to experiment with his diet, given that the majority of all living biomass on the island was pretty strictly human, but he'd fed on a few stray dogs and cats before, and that wasn't too bad. Apparently, gigantic arthropods from hell were pushing it. Best to stick with the safe stuff.

He'd gotten rid of most of it, but there was still an uncomfortable feeling in his biomass. He couldn't tell what it was – it didn't _hurt_, but he knew it was there and he didn't like it. Just something… off. He might have said that it made his skin crawl, but since that happened to him on a regular basis and he was completely used to it, the figure of speech didn't occur to him.

Damn it. He'd been fine before, but now he was actually hungry. And there was a distinct lack of anything edible around.

What _were_ those things? He'd reduced the five after him into so much paste, but doubtlessly there were more around. Creatures like that… they couldn't be natural. Could they?

Gentek had done plenty of crazy experiments – hell, he was a living testament to that. But most of the real Mercer's memories were his now, trickled back with less and less frequency over the few years since the Outbreak, and the man had known nothing about giant wasps from hell. And whatever he'd tasted in that anomalous thing, it wasn't the virus.

He had to have covered a lot of distance from the bunker he'd found himself in, so it didn't seem likely that they'd been put there to hurt him. But… huh. Was it possible that they, too, had escaped from the facility? The place had been deserted when he'd awakened, and everyone being wiped out sort of made sense… but no, the door had been sealed until he'd left, hadn't it? He pressed his fist to his temples. Whenever he tried to think about it, a spike of pain shot through his head.

Well, nothing more to do than keep running. He sighed. He didn't tire, not like normal people, but tired was the best way to describe how he felt – like something heavy and hopeless was sapping the raw joy he usually felt at the prospect of running free. The sun was already low in the sky, the clouds lit orange by the sunset. Had he really spent the whole day on the move? He hadn't been holding back in speed, and there was still nothing to be seen. Where _was_ he? What if this desert never ended, and –

Wait.

There _was_ something. Tall and thin, barely a stick on the horizon. He squinted, unable to tell if he was imagining it or not.

He probably was. Hah. The great Monster of Manhattan, stranded in the middle of some godforsaken wasteland, so desperate he was wishing on illusions and shadows. Pathetic.

But something held him back, and Alex Mercer waited. He waited as the sun bowed and slipped under the sky, waited as dusk crept to claim its place.

And on the horizon, he saw a tower. It was lit in gaudy red and white, slightly thicker at the top. Brighter than the faded stars that slowly sprinkled into view. It was alone, and that was strange – it looked like something that belonged in a city.

But buildings meant people, and neon lights meant civilization. And for as many problems as humanity brought, that lone tower was one of the most welcome sights he'd ever seen.

He needed answers. But first, he needed reassurance. A cell phone, a computer. He could try to contact his sister from there. Somebody had to know their way around – he could get directions. Maybe even find an airport, if that was necessary. He didn't like the idea. But there were worse things he'd do if they were necessary to get home.

And if she _wasn't_ home… people were going to die.

Sand flew and rocks shattered as a viral tornado tore a path through the wasteland.

_Dana, I'm coming._


	3. Unexpected Help

The night was still young when Alex Mercer finally arrived at… _sort of _civilization.

Little of interest had happened on the last leg of his run. Miles had passed in a blur of rocks, dust, and a few withered plants. He'd spotted a lone coyote wandering the sands and chased after it, unsure of the next time he was going to find a possible meal.

He'd… kept it down, at least, but it made him wonder – how fucking different were coyotes from dogs? Because he'd consumed a few of the latter before, and they definitely hadn't made him feel like hell. Not as much to eat as he usually liked, and no memories worth noting, but completely edible. The coyote, on the other tentacle – it was like that leftover feeling from the wasp-thing, only worse. He felt disoriented, overheated. The ground wasn't as firm as it should have been. And his biomass was sloshing around inside, refusing to settle for more than a few seconds.

Wherever the hell he was, the local wildlife wasn't agreeing with him. He'd have to stick to humans. That was nothing new, but it was a little harder when the majority of the area's acceptable people to eat weren't helpfully identifying themselves in black full-body armor. Still, he couldn't afford to weaken himself out over some magnanimous notion of not being a monster. It wasn't like he was hunting _innocent _people, anyway. Wherever you could find humans, you could always count on running into scum and criminals. When Alex ran into them, they didn't get to run away.

But whatever the coyote had done to him, it wasn't going away, and the persisting feeling of wrongness in his biomass was doing little to help his mood. And when a sprawling town had finally appeared on the horizon, at the foot of the brilliant tower… well, actually, it didn't matter. No amount of prior good mood could have alleviated it.

It… wasn't a city. Ducking under a gate made of what might have been a mishmash of old car doors, Alex wasn't sure _what _he could call it. It was _big_ enough to be a city, street after street. But to compare it to his Manhattan?

It was like somebody had taken a ruin, fixed the worst parts up with trash, and left the rest alone. Everything was falling apart. Unlit, broken signs hung crooked, doors were smashed, and more buildings were blocked off than not. Fences had been erected with sheets of scrap metal and old siding, tipped with razorwire. The roads were asphalt, but they looked like they hadn't been repaved in several decades. Massive cracks aside, there were potholes bigger than cars… and speaking of, the lack of cars was disconcerting when he compared it to the bumper-to-bumper traffic he knew. He saw a few wrecks, all about as thoroughly destroyed as cars usually were after he'd used them as projectiles. They had to be old, though, because the paint had thoroughly flaked off, and he didn't see a single newer, functioning vehicle.

It looked like… well, a city that had been abandoned and left to rot. And in the distance, that bright tower mocked the dead expanse.

Yet there were people. Not a metropolis, not like his home. But there were at least a couple of weary-looking stragglers travelling up each street he saw, usually more, and others loitered against buildings in small groups. In a sense, maybe it was a good thing he wasn't feeling so great – it was hard to be hungry when his biomass was lurching drunkenly with every step, and the main thing his predatory instinct noticed about this shantytown's inhabitants was that nobody was alone. Everyone was either in pairs or within somebody else's line of sight. Whatever this place was, it apparently wasn't very safe… He looked up at the latest row of decrepit buildings and held back a snort of laughter. Yeah, _that_ was a genius breakthrough.

He couldn't help but feel increasingly confused as he wandered the shantytown. The people were… different. Warier, more hardened than the self-absorbed, posh masses of his home. It showed in their cautious eyes and lean muscles, the various knives and holsters he spotted in their belts. Hardship… maybe that was it. This place definitely didn't look as privileged as Manhattan. Not everyone could afford to live in the Big Apple, and he'd never seen anything outside of it… but his memories had, and this… none of them had ever seen anything like this. Different cities, and bad parts of them, yes, but this… something just wasn't right.

A bit up the sidewalk, somebody had built a makeshift market stand out of old parts. He veered to the other side of the road as he approached, not wanting to invite conversation. But despite himself, he found himself slowing as he passed the stand. He'd seen jewelry stands, artists' galleries… ruined more than a few of them, too. And like this one, he'd seen food stands. But not quite like this one. A man was selling a variety of meats that definitely wouldn't have passed a health inspection. Was that a _squirrel?_

Whatever. It wasn't his business what people ate, unless it was poisonous and he was planning to eat _them_ later. He just… He didn't feel threatened, not expressly. There was no trace of Redlight, nor any sign of Blackwatch – not yet. But this place threw him for a loop.

Another street, another row of ruined buildings. At some point in the past, they would have looked just like the lower districts of Manhattan; of that, he was sure. But now they were torn, crumbling to debris; the wounds ranged from filthy walls and barely-clinging paint jobs to entire walls having fallen away, leaving rusty skeletons of the structure's higher points. It was so familiar, and yet so alien – like the Infected zones that had once plagued Manhattan, but without the flames and shambling Redlight-infected hordes. That had been a life in its own right, albeit a harsh and violent one; this place was…

He didn't know; he really didn't know. But he couldn't afford to let his guard down. The wasteland… if he was still in the United States, he was somewhere in the southwest. Blackwatch had operated in Arizona before, and in a small town, at that; they weren't limited to the East Coast, or even to major population centers. If they had anything to do with putting him where he'd awakened, he could almost certainly count on them being in the area. Even if they somehow hadn't, he knew that Blackwatch would never just let him slip away; they'd always continue the search, always leave him running. Either he would destroy them or they would destroy him. There was no other future.

Alex was on unfamiliar ground, but he could make it his; hopefully, he'd either know his way around or be a hundred miles away by the time Blackwatch showed its hand. He looked back to his surroundings, trying to make sense of what he saw. Most of the streetlamps and electric signs were broken, although a few still shone. Most of the light came from ground level, though; somebody had spaced out barrels on the street, probably filled with trash, that smoldered with flame and coughed foul-smelling smoke. He idly wondered how effective they'd be if he ever needed to throw something. Maybe if he found some gasoline…

For now, though, it was just civvies. No point in starting a panic.

A good amount of the people he saw appeared to belong to some kind of common group. He figured they were in a gang; they all had their hair cut in the same oddly familiar way, and wore the same outfits. Half wore plain white tees, while the other half's garb wasn't that different from his; dirty jeans and leather jackets with a white crown on the back. Ironically enough, they were easily the best-dressed people he'd come across. Alex was about as far from a fashion connoisseur as one could get, but the general garb in this place consisted of a lot of rags that looked – and smelled – like they hadn't seen a wash in years.

One of the jacketed men on his current street was relatively alone, although a couple of his buddies were only a little farther down the road. He was reclining against a dirty old window, smoking.

"Uh." Five years of Dana's sadistic attempts to get him to mingle with normal people had borne little fruit. "…Hey."

The man sucked a long draught from his cigarette, exhaling a cloud of acrid smoke that made Alex grimace. "Who are you?"

The virus's eyes narrowed, and he shifted defensively. "What's it to you?"

To the other man's credit, he didn't back down; his gaze flicked over to the other two members of his gang nearby before looking back to the hostile stranger. "You're not a King. You some kind of wannabe?"

Alex blinked. "A King?"

The man visibly relaxed. "You're not from around here, are you?" He chuckled. "The Kings run Freeside – first thing you should know about the place. Don't get in our way and you'll be fine. And change your clothes – people will think you're trying to pass by as one of us. Not gonna go over well."

"No thanks." Alex had no interest in gang affairs, and anyone who thought he was trying to impersonate them could fuck off. Unless he actually _was_ impersonating them. But that meant they were dead. "Look, I really need to make a call. Can I borrow your cell phone?"

The gang member gave him a blank stare. "What are you talking about?"

"A… cell phone…" Alex enunciated carefully, with equal confusion. "It'll only take a second, I just really need to talk to my sister…"

The supposed 'King' shook his head. "Shit, man, I should have known you were high."

_What?_ Alex almost snarled aloud, but the man was already walking away, tossing the spent cigarette to the ground. His fingers clenched as he contemplated giving chase; in the end, he quashed that tempting thought and heaved an angry sigh. Ugh. Fine, he didn't need to talk to fuckheads anyway. What was his _problem?_

Freeside – was it the name of a district or the name of this place? He'd never heard of a place called Freeside, and a slum of this size… places like this didn't exist in the country he knew. Did they? These unfamiliar streets just kept going on in an endless weave, a nightmare version of the city he called home. This was far too big to be some patched-together congregation of the homeless. But what _was_ it? Even Manhattan hadn't looked this bad when most of its population had been killed by Redlight and few buildings boasted intact windows. Or rather, it looked like the same had happened, and then the fires had been left to burn… and people had trickled back in, skipping the rebuilding, the recovery.

And people were _watching _him. He'd been used to it, but in Manhattan, he'd been something between an infamous terrorist and an urban legend. Here, he was unknown… and everyone was sizing him up for it. Could they tell he was dangerous, or was everyone here just that paranoid? As a monster that hid behind others' identities as protection, it was making him _very_ frustrated.

He made a sharp turn and stormed into a darker alley. Some old streetlamps and makeshift torches had given the main streets a wan light, but it was shadowy here. He settled into a spot next to an empty dumpster and leaned against the wall. As long as he didn't look up and see the ruined buildings, he could almost pretend he was back in Manhattan. If he did look up…

The sky was… different. New York had never achieved total darkness; reflected rows of lights from every district of the city mingled with smog to create a vaguely lit haze that obscured the night; a pale plane punctuated only by occasional air traffic and a weakly glowing moon. The moon was so much brighter here, cutting a stark contrast against the near-black sky. And a million smaller points of light that must have hidden behind Manhattan's constant splendor peered out here, as tiny and scattered as people looked when viewed from eighty stories up.

A low chuckle grabbed his attention, yanking his mind out of stargazing. He turned quickly. A group of people was approaching from the other end of the alley, and he'd pinned down their type even before he could smell the alcohol on their breaths.

Great. Walking straight into a back alley without scanning the surroundings. Had Blackwatch taught him nothing? He rolled his eyes. _Sloppy._

Not that he had anything to fear from this ragtag group. It was dark, but not so dark that he had to shift his eyesight to size up the four of them. Two held small firearms of some sort – one of which was slightly luminous. A gun with a light attached? That seemed pointless… The third had a knife, and the last had some kind of stick or pipe. These idiots wouldn't have held him up on the day he was born, much less now.

A slow, vicious grin tugged at his lips, unseen in the shadows. That _was_ the nice thing about alleyways, wasn't it? Nobody was watching.

"Your caps or your life," the guy with the knife sneered.

One of the gunmen giggled, an unhinged sound. "Oh, what's the point? I'm going to rip this bitch a new one anyway!"

The others laughed. Alex's smirk was like a scimitar – thin, curved, and sharp enough to cut.

"Before anything else, I should probably thank you for something," he drawled.

"Oh look, the little bitch thinks he's so brave," jeered the giggling one. "Come on, then, out with it. What were you going to say?"

He tilted his head up, eyes glinting like ice in the starlight. "Thanks for bringing me takeout."

He gave them no time to scream – only empty gasps and one panicked _'shit!' _preceded the mass of tentacles that erupted from the would-be-victim's body, spearing all four men at once. More tendrils whipped out, snapping necks and crushing throats to further seal their lips as others pierced skin and unleashed their deadly payload. No trace was left behind; his feeder tentacles devoured every inch of his prey, breaking down their weapons right alongside the tasty bits he wanted. Sickening snaps, crunches, and slicker noises chilled the empty alleyway until finally, his tendrils receded back into himself.

A whirl of conflicting memories battered his head, four new lives burned into his stream of consciousness. He closed his eyes, lifting a hand to his temple in preparation for the dizzying rush of information.

His gut lurched. Violently.

"Fuck, not again," he moaned, sliding down against the wall.

A few seconds later, he was wishing it was just 'again'. Because it was worse this time, so much worse. His head was reeling with images, unfamiliar memories that might have helped explain things if he'd been able to focus on them. But it was a senseless pulse of color behind his eyes, because his biomass was throbbing like a jackhammer and he felt like something inside him was on _fire_. He managed to curl into a fetal position, the simple action leaving him feeling like he was going to throw up. Hell, he didn't even have the organs to do that! What was wrong? Was there something wrong with _him_? Oh god, what if he couldn't consume _anything _anymore? Had Blackwatch poisoned him somehow, decided that a slow death was just as effective as a quick one?

He wasn't sure how long it went on. The coyote had left him feeling off-balance. This? Now he could hardly fucking move and it _wasn't going away_. And his head was pounding so hard he was surprised it didn't just explode and be done with it. Whatever was wrong, it wasn't healing over, and panic kindled a new kind of nausea.

It was to the point where he would have crushed his own head just to make the aching stop, except he couldn't lift his arms from where they rested against his knees, fingers clutching his forehead. Tentacles were trying to break free from his body; his innards were having one hell of a trip and now his surface wanted to join in. The only reason he held them back was because he doubted he could pull them back in afterwards, and he wasn't in any position to deal with angry mobs.

As if that particular thought was taunting him, he heard a noise; a human sound, one that wasn't coming from his own throat. Was it a real voice, or just a scrap of memory?

It was all he could do to keep his biomass from bubbling out of his skin. If somebody caught a glimpse of his true nature, he'd have to kill them before word got out. And he didn't want to stand up right now. He probably _could_, if he truly needed to… but just thinking about it was making his stomach churn. Or churn harder, anyway.

Something warm touched his shoulder, and he flinched, the little action sharpening all the knives tearing at his skull. Fuck, he _had_ heard something. Somebody. If it was another thug, he was fucked. Pathetic. The great Zeus, completely helpless at the hands of a mere human… The person prodded at him, and his body gurgled. Raw instinct told him that touch was the precursor to eating, but he felt like so much shit right now that he couldn't even _think _of trying to consume whoever was invading his space.

He tried to tell them to go away, but the words were unintelligible even to his own ears.

And they kept poking, feeling points along his arm. Dimly, he wanted to pay attention, to gain _some_ measure of control over his surroundings, but he just couldn't. All he could focus on was the urgent need to keep his surface looking normal, and a weak attempt to pace his own breathing.

He tried not to think about how he was entirely at somebody else's mercy. The rolling waves of pain engulfed him, but even they couldn't quite drown that out.

He curled in on himself just a shade tighter, wishing that Dana was here.

0o0o0

Arcade Gannon walked through Freeside's streets at a brisk pace. It was a shame, but he was in a hurry, and he didn't have time to stop and savor the joy and radiant beauty of the reeking slum he knew as home.

He was hot, tired, and all-around not in a good mood. In general, he did not have much patience for people. By proxy, he had even _less_ patience for people being stupid, and the past three hours, he felt, had been completely dictated by stupidity. In short, things had been so busy at the Fort that Julie had sent him out to have yet another unproductive talk with the Garretts, instead of taking up the crusade herself as she usually did. Because _obviously_, nicely asking a barkeep to stop dealing alcohol and chems was going to yield results.

Well, at the very least, all of that unpleasant business was done with, and the air smelled like filth and smoke rather than alcohol and telltale sweat. Now he just had to get back to the Followers' fort without getting pickpocketed, mugged, raped, or brutally murdered.

He'd been here a long time. As long as Freeside had desperate people, the Followers would remain. And as long as New Vegas continued to strip men of their valuables, dreams, and dignity, there would always be desperate people in Freeside. He cast a baleful glance up at the distant Lucky 38, that beacon of a dead age that guided pilgrims to their demise.

"Circulus vitiosus," he mused.

It was always the same; they came hoping to strike it rich, and they left destitute, without a cap to their name. And _somehow_, it ensnared them still, and those humbled gamblers vowed to someday return to the city of lights, just to break themselves all over again.

When he first came to Freeside, he'd marveled at the almost-otherworldy grandeur that lay just out of reach. Now, he knew it for what it was. Just another way in which the Old World laughed at them from beyond the grave.

He sighed, wiping a lock of blonde hair away from his sweating forehead. Freeside indeed – this lovely hub of oppressive heat, human misery, and ruination in general. _What's not to love?_

He craned his neck to the side as he strode back toward the Fort, keeping his eyes on the shadier alleys. The extra second of forewarning saved lives; Freeside's gangs were one of the numerous reasons he didn't like to leave his station. He peered into yet another backstreet as he passed it… Oh, look. Completing the charming image of the battered slum was a picture perfect specimen. Freeside just wasn't Freeside if the streets weren't littered with chemmies drugged out of their skulls.

He paused, heaving a theatrical sigh. Yep. Common enough sight. Somebody in dark clothing was huddled up against the wall, head buried in their hands. The Followers could do their job all they wanted; did it even matter, when everyone seemed so determined to drive themselves into the ground?

And here was the archetype of their ranks. He rolled his eyes. If he had his own way with his life, he'd happily pass by this alleyway and leave the chemmie to his own merry head trip. But Julie had this obsession with spreading the word. He thought that it was only a little more effective at endearing to these morons than punching them in the gut was, but… Another sigh. It was time for yet another 'The Followers Can Help' speech, capital letters included. He could just see the grateful response – 'Fuck off, dickbag.' Ooh! What kind of unsavory substance would lace the usual ball of spit to the face? Always a new experience.

He kept his plasma pistol out, keeping his eyes on the shadows; for all he knew, this person was a plant, and a bunch of thugs were hiding in the shadows. But then again, what was the point of that? In Freeside, everyone was hard-pressed enough to look after themselves. Charity? He could have laughed. If they were trying to use sympathy to lure out an unwary philanthropist, they couldn't have picked a worse city.

He let his gun drop to his side when he reached the man without incident. He hadn't given any sign of noticing his approach – he'd even worried that the man was dead for a moment, until he'd gotten close enough to see the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. At this distance, he could definitely tell that the guy was sick; what little he could see of his skin was more of a glorified grey than actual color, and he was audibly panting. Joy. He was either higher than a kite or near-catatonic with withdrawal.

"Hey," he began, feeling awkward. Shit, this was always so much harder than Julie made it seem. "Uh, you look like you could use some help."

The guy didn't even look up.

Arcade wasn't sure whether that was better or worse than being told to fuck himself. "There's a place here in Freeside. The Old Mormon Fort, down by the east side? Yeah, the Followers can help. You know, if you feel like making something out of your life instead of ingesting poison for the rest of your days."

The man groaned.

He was tempted to groan too. Couldn't he even _try_ to be responsive? He'd never met anyone too high to drunkenly spit insults at him, and this person was clearly still conscious. He was either ignoring him or completely delirious.

"Any time now, if you feel like getting out of your own head and realizing there's a world out here." He couldn't keep the irritation from leaking into his tone.

One pause. Two. No response.

"What use is helping somebody if they don't want to be helped?" he muttered aloud. He almost turned and left then – if this man wanted to rot, that was his choice – but… something was just _off_ about this. Doubt gnawed at the corner of his mind, and after a moment's debate, he dropped to his knees next to the man. He carefully eyed the immediate surroundings – Freeside's generous coating of filth and squalor was in full glory, but there were no discarded syringes, no inhalers or pill boxes. There was an empty bottle some distance away, but it was covered with grime; probably not new.

Just because he wasn't _surrounded _by chems didn't mean he wasn't a druggie, but…

Frowning, Arcade reached out and after a moment's hesitation, touched the man's shoulder. He cringed, eyes instantly widening in alarm. He was extremely, _extremely_ feverish; so much that the heat burned straight through however many layers of clothing he wore. Wasn't leather supposed to be cool to the touch? The guy's coat felt like it had been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours, and it was a good ways into the night right now. Either one hell of an overdose or pretty severe radiation sickness.

He worriedly felt further along his arm, stopping at the elbow. The man's pulse was all kinds of wrong – his heart might have been palpitating for how fast it was, and it felt more like a series of little convulsions than a pulse.

"G'wry," the wretch breathed.

Arcade frowned, a large portion of his frustration having changed to genuine concern. That changed things; this wasn't another dreg from Freeside's endless supply of washed-out junkies, but somebody _very_ sick. Shit, what _was_ the diagnosis? High fever, disorientation, possible delirium. All of those _could _be from chems, but he couldn't be certain; he knew to look for dilated pupils, but the man's eyes were shut tight. Julie was better at this kind of thing than he was… but even if he did know exactly what was wrong, he didn't have anything to treat the man with. He definitely needed to bring him back to the Followers.

"Come on," he tried, in his best reassuring tone. Thankfully, his patient was too out of sorts to take offense to how condescending it sounded.

He irritably rubbed at his brow. Right. The guy couldn't hear him. He tried tugging at his arm, hoping to coax him up onto his feet. But the man pressed himself further against the wall, flinching away with a strange, keening whine that prickled at the hair on the back of his neck.

Arcade paused, scowling anxiously. _Damn it._ He was a doctor, but he only ever did the up-front _healing people_ part of the job when the Followers were short on staff. And he _definitely_ wasn't one to trawl Freeside and drag lost causes back to the fort. This guy didn't want to be moved. He seemed to be in pain. Was it _safe_ to move him? It might have been a better idea to go back to the fort and fetch Julie, or at least some radiation drugs – the handful of stimpaks in his coat pocket were as good as useless here. But if he left the guy alone… he was completely helpless, a convenient target for Freeside's criminal population. He couldn't leave him alone in good conscience.

He tugged at the man's arm again, grimacing at the stubborn resistance. "I'm trying to _help_ you!" he snapped.

A pause. He felt his patient's body shift, just a fraction, and looked down.

The man's eyes had finally opened. Arcade's brow rose; even unfocused and hazy as they were, they were like nothing he'd ever seen before – a startling ethereal blue. They peered up at him with dull curiosity, as if just noticing the young doctor's existence and not being all that sure what to make of it.

Arcade lifted a hand; the leaden gaze followed it briefly before swimming back to his face. Definitely aware, then.

Now for the hard part.

"Hey." Damn, he really needed to work on his gentle voice. It sounded patronizing even to his own ears. "I can get you help, but you need to come with me. All right?"

The man just stared up at him, unblinking. He resisted the urge to sigh. Okay, so the guy seemed to be half-dead from fever, but _really._

He pulled at his arm again. It took a few tries, but with some coaxing, he finally got the man to stand. He was tall, a few inches over Arcade, and wobbling so dangerously that Arcade had to let him use his shoulder for support. And then he nearly buckled. The man was _heavy_.

And so Arcade found himself walking back to the Followers with a delirious human-shaped block of lead stumbling after him, knocking him over no less than four times when he tripped and bore his full weight on the doctor.

"Note to self," he muttered as he trudged through the trash-filled streets. "In the future, refrain from picking up strays."

* * *

_Circulus vitiosus – '_A vicious circle', or more loosely translated, 'a vicious cycle'.


	4. Despair

Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe.

For a while, that was all Alex had – a constant rhythm above the churning hell of pain his body had become. Somewhere along those lines, he managed to fit in 'don't eat the guy in front of you' and 'keep the tentacles hidden', if just barely. He was only dimly aware of what was going on, and the distant part of his mind that occasionally made plans instead of just _acting _was convinced this was stupid as all hell, but what else was there to do?

The thought of being at somebody else's mercy was a concept that filled him with utter dread – well-earned, in that he'd spent his whole life being hunted by those who wanted to kill him and use his body for experiments, or worse, keep him alive and use his body for experiments. As far as he knew, there was a grand total of one person on the planet that gave a shit whether he lived or died, and this person wasn't her; the only thing he had going for himself right now was his anonymity.

But as it was, it was hard to imagine anything worse – and there had been something familiar in that voice, something that tugged at his interest long enough to hold. '_I'm trying to _help _you._' A different voice – nobody could match _hers_ – but the inflection was identical. Dana had used those very same words on him, several times, when her everlasting war against his antisocial tendencies came to a boil.

Those words often followed long arguments about words he'd come to detest – _stress, trauma, psychology, socializing, taking showers –_ but he knew that she always _meant_ well; she just didn't understand what he was, how he needed to live. And he never blamed her for that; it meant the world to him that she tried as much as she did. Those were frustrated words, angry words, but they _cared_.

And so he'd taken a blind leap of faith.

Focusing on the simple, repetitive motions helped. It was quick, constant. As long as he could feel his footsteps, he knew where the ground was and the dizziness couldn't have its way with him. He still hurt, but he was used to hurting. He had survived the parasite, slowly eating him alive – he could endure this.

He did lose his balance and pitch forward a couple of times. Thankfully, the guy he was following didn't get irreparably crushed – he even helped him back up. He was pretty sure that would have been a bad way to express gratitude.

"Oh. Oh, my."

Words. They were a little clearer, now that he had something else to hold as a reference point to the world. He still had to struggle to make them out, though. Words meant something, and something entailed the possibility of change. And he wanted change. Now.

It was a different voice, higher. Female. "That looks…" The man he was using for support shifted, and had he been in any state to, he'd have been ashamed by the way his legs nearly gave out at this. The sudden movement caused his already-heaving biomass to give a nasty lurch, and a good portion of whatever was being said was lost to him. "…happened?"

"I don't know. I found him on my way back." That was the first voice, the man who'd led him to wherever he was. He sounded agitated.

"I see… and what did the Garretts say?"

"You know, Farkas, there _might_ be more pressing concerns right now. Like this half-dead guy that's using me as a walking stick. He's definitely pressing me, at least."

They weren't moving anymore, and the nausea was rising over his head again. His eyes refused to focus any further than wavering smudges of light and shadow, but idly, Alex would have loved to see the expression on the second speaker's face.

A sigh. "Arcade, this really isn't the time for your attitude – "

"And this really isn't the time for your lectures," 'Arcade' snapped back. "_Help._"

He stumbled as his support started moving again. That made his head pound even worse, and he gave up trying to pick out words for a while. Just step. And breathe.

He was vaguely aware of being coaxed down; he flopped onto something soft and firm. He probably could have identified it if his brain was working, but it really wasn't. Everything was just a disconnect of touch and sound, linked together by the rolling pain.

He heard words now and then, floating in and out of his own hell.

"Prop him up, then take…"

Something cold was touching him. Despite the fact that he was practically burning up, it didn't feel good against his skin, and he would have swatted it away if only his arms would listen to him.

"This can't be right… I think this one is broken, can you get me another?"

Another touch from something cold.

"…readings are all wrong…"

Poke, prod. Breathe.

"I don't know what the hell is going on here..."

"…what are you going to…"

"Give me that…"

Another prod. He clenched his fingers, trying to keep his form coherent. Tentacles were kind of conspicuous.

"Just give him the goddamn Rad-Away, it can't hurt him any worse at this point."

"This isn't radiation sickness, he's…"

Now they were getting louder, too loud. It was making his headache worse, and he was dealing with enough shit as it was. He would have reached up and clawed their faces off to make them quiet again, but his arms didn't want to move.

"So you're just going to…"

"…hope it works out?"

"…any better ideas?"

Blissful silence! Maybe he wouldn't have to kill them later.

A sigh. "Fine."

A few seconds later, he growled as a sharp, thin point pierced his side. His body tensed, muddied thoughts flashing back to Cross and the parasite. Was he being attacked? He blearily opened his eyes, trying to make out the two dark blobs that hovered over him. Damn it, he still couldn't see, and it took him a few tries to simply lift his head.

The female voice was saying something, but his attention was elsewhere – turned inward. His biomass was churning, but not the frantic, sickening thrash that it had been doing for the past half hour. This didn't exactly feel good, but it didn't hurt either; it was a little closer to how he rearranged himself when he changed forms. Almost… purposeful, although he had no idea what it was doing. But no, he could feel streams of biomass flowing towards the point on his hip where something had pricked him.

And then he realized that he could actually _feel _it – that his awareness was no longer blocked out by a pounding headache and fever. He blinked; color and clarity had reentered the world at some point in the past few seconds. His sight was a bit fuzzy around the edges, but even that was clearing up.

But as the sickening heat faded, he became increasingly aware of a painful point on his side; the same spot where all his mass was flowing towards.

His whole body throbbed around it. And he desperately wanted it out.

He jerked upright, eyes darting around his surroundings. White cloth, steepled overhead – some kind of tent. Makeshift shelves, a few beds. Two people hovering over him. Damn, he'd almost forgotten about them. He had to keep playing charades around them if he wanted any kind of help, and splitting some poisonous blob from his side was unlikely to go over well. These were probably the voices from before; there was a blonde man with rimmed glasses and a woman with a brown mohawk, both in lab coats. _Lab coats_. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with his illness – and a desperate churning that _did_. Lab coats _never_ meant anything good.

The last time he'd woken up to two people hovering over him, he'd been on the verge of being vivisected. He struggled to pull himself into a sitting position, tangling and then ripping the bedsheets that clung adamantly to his legs.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Now the woman was leaning over him, too close – he pulled away, nearly falling over for his trouble. He stumbled, legs swinging over the edge of the bed. "Don't exert yourself!"

The male doctor just pointed to the right. "The bathroom is over there."

Alex had never used a bathroom in his life, but if Dana's reactions were anything to go by, it was a place nobody would bother you in – and that suited him just fine. He practically bowled over the mohawked woman in his haste to get out, tearing the tent flap a few inches wider. The man had pointed to the side; he turned right immediately and saw the corner of thick stone wall, a single door next to the junction. It survived its encounter with the hasty viral abomination, if barely.

Now he was in a building; a set of stairs directly in front of him, and two open doors leading to rows of dark green stalls. These, he recognized, and he hurried through the closer door, the one marked with a triangular stick figure.

Somebody shrieked, pushing past him in their haste to get out. He didn't have the space of mind to wonder about it. His skin was crawling with tentacles the instant the stall door swung shut behind him. His body was positively _writhing_, and his side burned like Blackwatch's cancer parasite was lodged in it.

His tendrils thrashed, midsection becoming more of a formless blur than anything recognizable. The parasite had latched onto him by seeding his biomass with its god-awful pathogen and wiring its tendrils through what felt like every inch of his body. This, though; he could feel where this thing began and ended. It was like a concentrated chunk of poison had gotten stuck in his body.

And that made it simple to get rid of. His tentacles carved around it, pushing out the afflicted biomass and anything in close proximity to it. In the end, there was a fist-sized chunk of discolored flesh at the end of one tentacle. It was unusually warm, and it made the tendril he gripped it with prickle uncomfortably.

He dropped it in the bowl, hissing when the resulting splash of water caught him in the face.

But… wow. Just like that, he felt absolutely fine again, his biomass busily re-knitting itself over the last of the damage. No dizziness, no burning up. He felt perfectly normal and it was possibly the most glorious feeling he'd ever experienced.

He cast an apprehensive glance at the blob of biomass. Somehow, he'd managed to force all of the toxins or infected tissue – the latter idea brought a brief flash of amusement – into one part of his body, and gotten rid of that. But he'd only managed it after being… treated, or something. Since when did human medicine work on him?

Then again, human medicine tended not to make humans slough off parts of their bodies, so 'working' was probably subjective. Still, it was a lucky break - not something he had any right to rely on. But was it wholly because of whatever he'd been treated with, or was it something he was capable of doing on his own? He had full control over his biomass, true, but his whole body had been a mess up until just now. Even if he'd known what to do, he wasn't sure he would have had the control to hold everything together.

He didn't want to have to rely on anyone the next time he got… _sick_, or whatever the hell that horrible feeling was. He didn't want to get sick again at all, period, but he had a sinking feeling that he was going to be dealing with a good bit of misery until he figured out what was wrong with him.

There was a jagged scrap of metal in the expelled biomass. Upon closer inspection, there was a thin pool of something green around it. His scowl deepened further when he realized that it exuded a faint glow. He racked his memories for clues; a minute later, he was still just as confused as before. None of the numerous scientists he'd eaten had any idea what this glowy green stuff could be. If anything, the memories of a few sci-fi enthusiasts likened it to something out of an alien movie. Which didn't help him at all.

…and what had been with that woman, anyway? This whole situation was weird. He hadn't even started eating people yet. Maybe his tentacles had been showing.

He made to open the stall door, then glanced back at the toilet. He _knew_ there was some way to make it get rid of stuff…

After a couple seconds of rifling intently through his memories, he found the necessary information and prodded at the handle-looking thing above the seat. He jumped back when a loud, sudden hiss emitted from the toilet bowl. He watched warily, shoulders tensed and primed to fight, as the water level rose and began to stir violently.

The blob of unknown-substances-not-good-for-Blacklight rolled around a bit as the water swirled, and bits of it came off, but for the most part, the disappearing part wasn't happening. Nothing noticeable had occurred by the time the water settled, and the chunk of whatever was largely unaffected.

He pushed on the handle again, once more backing up when the contraption gurgled and hissed. The water level was higher, now, but the current wasn't as strong this time. It must have needed more force.

He mashed it a third time; the handle came off in his fingers. Fuck. The blob was doing little more than lazily spinning around. And… oh.

He yelped as water rushed over the bowl and began to pool on the floor, burning the biomass of his shoes. He leapt upward, positioning himself between the top of the stall walls and the ceiling – one hand spiky and anchoring him above, one foot braced against the stall. He wasn't going to let anything get the jump on him.

One arm crawled into a spiky whip, ready to strike out if the thing made a second attack. But it was just burbling, spilling water onto the tile. He scowled, reaching out tentatively when the tide appeared to have receded.

Another swill of water washed over it, soaking the tips of his tiny claws; he snarled and drew the tentacle back, slashing through two stalls and rending the toilet in half.

He regretted it almost immediately. Water practically _fountained_ up from the pipes, blasting him square in the chest; he fell from his perch, landing on all fours in a fighter's crouch. Except the floor was wet, and he was clinging to the wall a second later with human hands, hissing hatefully at the gushing water.

By the time he'd escaped the trap and slammed the door shut behind him, there were a series of curiously spiky handprint-shaped depressions on the walls and the room was thoroughly drenched. Water was trickling through the crack under the door, soaking into the carpet; he hastily stepped away.

_Okay, Mercer,_ he told himself, feeling faintly like an idiot. He could practically hear Dana laughing at him. _You know absolutely nothing about what just happened in there._

Doing his best to look nonchalant, he headed back outside. His hand closed around the next door's knob, then hesitated. He heard voices. Angry voices. He lingered at the door, curious.

"…was moving around just fine!" It sounded like the male doctor's voice from before.

"What were you thinking, telling him to get up? The man couldn't _walk _without assistance. He could have gotten hurt!"

"And he didn't."

"I don't _care_. Next time, get a bedpan. I'm not going to have patients injuring themselves because you don't want to do your job properly."

"Yes, well, I seem to recall this _not being a part of my job._ I've done enough doctorly things for the night, wouldn't you say? I'm going off to bed. Good night."

"_Arcade_!"

Whatever the second voice had called out 'Arcade' for, the first didn't respond to it. He waited for the footsteps to fall silent before finally opening the door.

"Oh!" The mohawked doctor was waiting outside the door, apparently startled by his appearance. Her face was visibly redder than it had been a few minutes ago. Alex's lips twitched.

"How are you feeling? Here, I'll lead you back to the beds…"

Alex took a step back instinctively. "No thanks."

"Are you sure you should be up and about right now? You just had a bad spell."

He shrugged, dismissing her. "I heal fast."

The doctor gave him a shrewd look. "It's possible that you might be feeling better right now, after purging all that nastiness, but your body is still recovering. People don't just walk off these sorts of things. You need rest."

"Yeah, sure." This woman was starting to get on his nerves. Lab coats rubbed him the wrong way to begin with, and there was a grand total of one person in the world allowed to try to mother him. Mohawk doctor lady was not her. No… but if there was anyone here that was actually worth his time, it was the doctor who had 'saved' him. Hmm.

He looked up. "Where's the man that brought me in?"

"Arcade? I think he's in that camp over there." She waved towards one of the tents near the middle of the enclosed fort. "Before you go, though, I need to ask if we can take some bloodwork, or at least a physical. You had some very erratic – hey! I'm not done speaking to you!"

Alex was. He'd stopped paying attention after the 'camp over there'. Arcade, right… he dimly recalled that name from his fevered observations. Huh. So the guy's name was Arcade, then. Unusual name, although it wasn't really anything worth paying thought to.

By 'bloodwork', he was already halfway across the enclosure. Hurriedly. He wasn't sure what they'd found, but if it was anything incriminating, he'd have to get out of here as soon as possible. Definitely before they got too audacious and discovered that a 'blood' sample from him might just try to eat them.

Now that he was actually lucid, he could get a better view of the area. Four long stone walls surrounded an enclosure filled with white tents and old-looking machinery. Everything was washed-out and dusty – even New York City had been greener than this.

He stopped at the indicated tent; it was taller than most, and he could see bunk beds through the flap that fluttered in the dry breeze. He ducked in, peering at the occupied bunks. None of the heads really matched up to the glimpse he'd caught earlier.

"You're looking fairly sharp for somebody who was half-dead a few minutes ago."

Alex startled. He'd managed to tamp down the transforming reflex over the years, but the urge to sprout claws was by no means gone as he whirled, looking to pin the voice. It didn't take long to find – sitting in a chair in the tent's corner was the blonde doctor.

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said dryly, once he was sure his arms were under control. "Are you Arcade?"

"Julie handing out names again? Seems confidentiality is a thing of the past." He stood up, stretching. "Arcade Gannon, at your service. Resident researcher, part-time doctor, and apparently, I make a serviceable walking stick by your standards. What can I help you with? Julie's the one with the supplies, not me."

What _did_ he want? Alex was much more used to taking than he was asking, and the question threw him a bit. "Information," he decided. "I've got some questions."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but it's two in the morning," the doctor said dryly. "You'll have to forgive me for not wanting to get into an extended Q-and-A session at the moment. I've been waiting on sleep for a few hours now."

Alex didn't want to wait. He could practically feel the noose closing around him; an invisible clock counting down to when Blackwatch showed up. "Listen," he enunciated carefully, doing his best not to snarl out the words. "I really don't have time."

"You're surprisingly pushy, given your position," Arcade noted. Alex tensed, eyes narrowed. If the man wanted to imply he was weak, he could _easily _remedy that opinion. But the doctor just sighed. "A _few_ questions. I hope you know what that means. And first things first, let's take this outside. I don't want to wake up those _fortunate_ enough to be allowed sleep at this hour."

He followed the doctor outside to a spot with a fire pit and two chairs. Arcade offered one, but Alex remained standing.

"All right," he finally asked. "What is this place?"

"The Fort?" Arcade gestured around. "This is the local Followers outpost. Followers of the Apocalypse," he supplied at Alex's uncomprehending stare. "We're a charity organization. There's plenty of people that need help in the Wasteland, and most of them can't afford it, so we try to fill in the cracks. We do a decent enough job, I suppose, given that we're critically understaffed, undersupplied, and the NCR lets us know they don't want us around at every turn. While we're on this topic, I should ask a question of my own here."

Alex's body language must have been distinctly uncomfortable, because a second later, the doctor amended his words. "Nothing personal, I assure you. Strictly medical interest. What exactly happened to you that left you in such a state?"

"I… ate something that didn't agree with me."

Arcade snorted. "Like what? A nuclear reactor? You looked like you were practically swimming in radiation."

Alex paused, then slowly turned back to look at the doctor. "Radiation…?"

It was Arcade's turn to look perplexed, but there was a shade of suspicion around his narrowed eyes. "Yes, radiation…" There was a long pause. "Your lack of comprehension worries me."

_Shit._ He was definitely missing some key part of a bigger picture here, and the more he showed his ignorance, the more he invited questions.

_Act fast_, the recollections of a long-dead Blackwatch spy informed him. _You don't want to stand out here. You'll need a veritable excuse to write off not having what's apparently common knowledge._

_Retrograde amnesia,_ supplied a doctor in a slight Boston accent. _If you appeared fatally ill, brain damage would be a distinct possibility to consider. _

It wasn't in so many words – Alex had long since realized that the voices in his head were all memories and no actual brain activity. All 'conversations' seemed to be fabricated by his own mind in an attempt to process and retrieve relevant information. It was a relief to know, really – that as much as it seemed otherwise at times, he carried around recordings rather than a legion of trapped souls. He still felt their personalities, their hopes and fears and unanimous disgust of him, but at the very least, he could tell himself that the voices that shrieked in hatred weren't truly there.

They also happened very quickly; enough so that Alex replied without pause. "I… can't remember." A carefully crafted frown spread across his face. "Is it… important?"

The doctor had a strange look. "You… could say that." He appeared to consider his words for a bit; when he spoke again, it was slower, like he was speaking to a child. "Do you know where we are?"

Alex almost said Freeside, but he thought better of it. "No. I just… I was just running. Walking. Walking for a long time. I don't really remember anything before that."

"Great, just great." Arcade sighed. "What _do _you remember?"

Alex shrugged. He still wanted his questions answered. "Not much. Definitely nothing about radiation."

"Fair enough. Listen up, because it's pretty important if you don't want a repeat of whatever happened last night. Nearly everything is irradiated." He paused. "You do know what radiation is, right?"

"Yeah." Pretend amnesia or not, Mercer was not a patient virus monster.

"Good. That would have been a lot to explain. Like I said, everything's irradiated. It's not just the food, it's the whole landscape. Some places are worse than others. This part of the country's relatively clean, or so I've heard. It's worse out east. Still, though, it's not a good deal. Everything you eat, everything you drink, you're taking in negligible bits of radioactive material. That builds up. And the human body isn't built to handle it, hence radiation sickness. You got a spectacular taste of that.

"Some people have devices with inbuilt Geiger counters, but they're in limited supply. The rest of us have to make do with the old fashioned way. You're going to need to learn to recognize the symptoms, and flush yourself when you start to get sick. It's best to do it as frequently as possible to avoid lasting damage, but at the same time, medicine isn't everywhere. We can supply you with a bit of Rad-Away, but we're low on stocks here, so you'll need to get your own. There's also Rad-X, which helps you avoid absorbing more rads but doesn't do anything for what you already have."

Alex frowned. When there was a slight break in the conversation, he voiced the question that had been on his mind for a while. "Why is everything irradiated?" He was pretty sure this wasn't the Ukraine – or whatever that place was that Dana sometimes talked about. He didn't know of anywhere else on the planet that had suffered such a wide fallout, and everyone was speaking English here…

Arcade sighed again. "Now there's a pleasant story. See, a few centuries ago, the Pre-War government decided that leaving the world habitable and safe for future generations just wasn't worth bothering with. For that matter, they also decided that they were bored with life. So the United States and China played chicken with several hundred nuclear weapons. And nobody backed down. Invasions, espionage, tensions reach a boil, the whole song and dance. Just like that, entire world's population gets decimated, alongside with civilization, luxury, common sense, and nearly all life on the planet. We'll get back to you when we're finished picking up the pieces."

"The war? What _war_?" A horrible sinking feeling was beginning in his chest. "What… what year is it?"

It was Arcade's turn to shrug. "Not sure how that's relevant, but twenty-two eighty-one."

Alex's world broke.

He was dimly aware of the doctor's lips moving. Saying more? He didn't hear it. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Not after that.

Year… 2281. It… he couldn't wrap his head around it. He had been in 2014 and now he was not. It was too much of a jump – it didn't make sense. Whatever had happened to him hadn't incapacitated for a night or even a few weeks. It was… two hundred and sixty-seven years. Not incapacitated – _defeated_. Two and a half _centuries._ Gone. Unremembered and unnoticed.

It made no sense, but it _did _– why everything was so different, why this world didn't match up to the one he knew. A war, some cataclysm or whatever where humanity had finally decided it was sick of itself and rained down fire. Everything he'd seen aboveground had been dead, destroyed. It fit.

And time… _he_ could survive that long, apparently, if being unconscious for over two hundred and fifty years was living. But…

His stomach lurched.

He had to… go. Get out of here. Go before the volcano that now stirred in his chest could erupt.

Legs, moving. Felt strange. Stumbled. Weak, but not because he was hurt. Not in the way he could _fix_-

He didn't even know where he was going. Just… away. Outside. Not caged. Walls, too high – he wanted to get _out_, and it was only through a combination of numb detachment and willpower that he didn't spring over them and hit the ground running. Something in his chest was pounding, hot and frantic, and he might have let himself believe it was a heart if that word didn't have so many connotations for him – ones he couldn't touch, not now. He struggled to keep his breaths even – struggled and failed.

His quick stride turned into a lope. The street split and cracked under his feet, shattering outright where the foundations were already weakened. He was deaf to the hollers and yells of the few passerby as he plowed through whatever was unfortunate enough to be in his path. A garbage-can-turned-torch was knocked over; a wrecked car was run through.

He could feel the snap coming on, and only dimly knew that he wanted it to be far away from anyone else, for _her_ sake –

For _– her – _

And he would never see her again, never get to make up for all the hell he'd put her through, never make her smile never listen to her voice never go on never never _never _do _anything_ anymore because she

was

_dead_.

The sound that tore itself from his throat was more animal than human; something caught in a trap, screaming shrilly, mangled flesh torn on spikes. But he'd been through that before, and it was nothing, _nothing!_

By the time he ripped through Freeside's gate, he was in a flat sprint. But the feeling just got worse, even as he tried to outrun it, feet flying across dusty rock. It was a void; a hungry, furious _nothingness _that ripped him apart from the inside, piece by piece, and what was the point in fighting back when there was no longer meaning in the world?

His hands clenched into fists, grinding against themselves so hard that his biomass squelched and split – and from those perforations, tentacles rippled out, arcing and thrashing up his arms with maddened violence as his fingers split into razor claws, convulsing with the _need_ to hurt.

It no longer mattered where he was. Who was there to see him. Who was there to be hurt _by_ him. He was up to his neck in nothingness, moments away from being swallowed entirely by the pain, and he was beyond caring. Nothing could matter anymore. Nothing but –

He threw his head back and _screamed_ up to the grey sky.

"_Daaaanaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"_

His next cry carried no semblance of meaning - a raw, anguished roar that howled across the open expanse, only a helpless fraction of the overwhelming agony that drowned him. It wasn't _enough._

A feral snarl escaped his throat as he lashed out suddenly with his claws, all semblance of humanity gone. He needed to kill, _needed_ to rip the life from something and watch it die. But there was nothing to slaughter, nothing but emptiness and unbroken desert for miles. So he clawed at that, got down on his knees and _swung_, tearing vicious gashes into the ground again and again and _again._

The sand didn't break enough, didn't shatter and scream and _hurt_. So he _made_ it scream, shrieked along with the splitting rock as his spikes plunged into the ground and ripped and ripped and _ripped _until there was nothing more but defeated gravel. He scooped up a clawful and threw it with all the strength he could, but it was too light, too pointless, clattering to the ground like little shards of glass. After a moment's frenzied panting, he clawed out a great boulder and gave it the same treatment. That was a little better. Just keep the adrenaline flowing and feel the resistance, the tension, the strain, feel _anything _besides –

With another roar, he whirled around, one set of claws conjoining into a spiky, vicious whip. He slashed it across the sand, its full length tearing across the rock in a massive arc. It pulled him around and around until the air was choked with sand and the ground was scored with more gouges than he could count.

But it wasn't _enough_, and his arms melted again, forming stronger, thicker, stonelike fists. All he could think of was the need to crush, to _destroy_, to funnel out even the meanest fraction of his own agony to the world beyond.

He hauled his massive fists back, then slammed them into the ground. And there was pain – meager pain compared to the rest, but _real _pain, pain he recognized. He blinked, vague awareness brought back more out of shock than anything else.

His hammerfists were fractured. He could see cracks running down the joints. On a closer look, both hands seemed discolored – the normally smooth biomass was uneven, and the color reminded him more of necrosis than the usual stony dark grey.

And they had broken. Why were they so weak? He'd never…

He slumped into the sand and ruined rock and moaned. There was no point. Not to thinking, not to worrying. Not even to destroying. His fury had coagulated into a heavy grey stupor.

He could not run from the pain and he could not fight it. And he still could not face it.

But it refused to be ignored.

Two hundred and sixty-seven years had passed. Yes, he'd been captured… and held. And _stored_. And when he'd at last woken, the world he knew was dead, the way he lived was dead; the _only reason he had to keep on going _was dead.

_Everything was dead._

Everything except for him. Somehow, he still persisted. But he _felt_ dead. Maybe he'd never even really been alive. He wasn't a real person; did he have the right to feel like one?

Any attempts at deep breathing left him coughing and spitting sand, and why couldn't he stop _thinking_? How the fuck was he supposed to calm down when every single method he knew had been a suggestion from _her_?

He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky, one hand halfheartedly shielding his eyes from the sand. Colorless, a weak sort of grey. Not light enough to be dawn and not dark enough to see the stars. Just… empty. Like everything else.

And he needed _something_. Maybe to cling to, maybe to crush. He didn't know if either would help. But there was nothing here.

He bitterly wondered if he shouldn't have bothered fleeing Freeside for the moment. It was already destroyed; fuck, it looked pretty close to how he _felt._ But no… he knew exactly why he hadn't stayed and _couldn't_ stay, but right now, putting that old promise into thought hurt too much to bear.

Morosely, he looked back to the broken city just barely over the horizon, and that single tower above it. A slum of that size… This was just the sort of place Dana would have a _field _day writing with. He could picture it, plain as day. An evening in their apartment – sheaves of paper snapping up and down in the breeze from her desk fan, her fingers dancing over the keyboard in her haste to write down every single word of the million thoughts that were always flying through her head. He'd lie back on the couch and watch, letting her bounce lines off of him from time to time. He'd plunge into his churning mess of memories if it meant finding a word she wanted. She'd always smile at him, usually with some joke about him being Wikipedia or having no idea what 'context' meant. And he'd smile back, and forget – for just a _second_ – that outside those walls, Blackwatch hunted them. Dana…

His fingers clenched.

Dana…

His little sister…

…was…

…gone.

He howled.

* * *

[Achievement Unlocked! **Face The Facts** (5pts) _–Hate to break it to you, Dorothy, but you're not in Kansas anymore._]


	5. The New World

The sky was watery grey with dawn when Alex finally returned to Freeside.

He came back through the same gate he'd destroyed. The jagged, mismatched metal sheets were still strewn about in violent disarray near the entrance. He felt none of that energy now. Just a thick, heavy sort of numbness.

It was like one of the nightmares that plagued the rare occasion in which he slept, but there was no waking up. No realization that he was holed up in some half-destroyed abandoned loft and that everything he'd experienced was either born from his gruesome imagination or recollection of events securely in the past.

This time, waking brought none of those reassurances. He didn't know where he was and he didn't know where to return to. He didn't even remember the nightmare, but now he was awake and stuck in another.

And he didn't dare think about it, because hearing it was like a serrated claw through his chest, every time. Those three words never dulled, never lost their meaning, and he could only handle hearing them so many times before he snapped completely.

"Twenty-two eighty-one…" he mumbled to himself. The date tasted like poison.

Two and a half _centuries_. God, he'd never cared much for age – for all intents and purposes, he'd been born an adult and never grown a day older – but he last remembered being five years old. And now he was apparently two hundred and seventy-two. That was longer than he could picture – that was longer than any of his innumerable stolen lives could picture. That was several _generations_ on a human scale, and he'd somehow skipped… about eight of them. And he didn't even remember _why_. Memories – normal memories, _old_ memories, patrolling the now Redlight-free Manhattan. Dana had just broken up with a boyfriend – a man whom he'd never cared for anyway and may or may not have had a hand in their relationship splintering. Just… ordinary days, the kind of days that blurred into each other, dawn to dusk and dawn again in an endless cycle.

Burning. There was a brief impression of burning. Pain and horrible desperation crammed tight in his chest.

But as much as he pried, he remembered nothing before it and nothing after it. Nothing closer than waking up in an empty bunker hundreds of years later.

It was probably Blackwatch; they were the only ones with the tools to hurt him at all. He hadn't evolved too much after Greene died; without the constant three-way war and new strains of DNA to sample, there hadn't been much room for him to develop any new powers. He'd refined his existing ones, working up his strength and speed as time went on, but there had almost been no need. The military and remaining Infected had become laughably beneath him in terms of power. Perhaps _that_ was why he had stopped growing – there had been no new challenges to adapt to. Blackwatch had tested out several kinds of poison in hopes of stopping him, and he'd built up resistances to each new strain in time, but things had been, for the most part, stagnant. At least, until some unremembered event had stolen his entire fucking _life_ from him. He was going to _slaughter_ them for that.

Alex paused. Did Blackwatch even _exist_ anymore? He didn't have too much to go on, in terms of how much had survived the war, but suddenly there were nearly three centuries and a nuclear holocaust between himself and Blackwatch. Three hundred years was a long time, and the apocalypse was good at erasing things. Hell, for all he knew, the American _government _was gone… and Blackwatch had worked under them. Was there a chance they were gone for good?

He snorted; it came out sounding more like he was choking. He'd take that unending oppression back in a heartbeat if he could turn back time.

The faded stone walls of the Followers' fort came into view, and he hesitated. He'd have to go back, he knew that much. He still hardly knew anything about this world – this _future _– and it was his only lead for a possible friendly face. He just… he didn't want to talk. Not yet. He was close to certain that he could keep himself from haring off and brutally mauling the next living thing he saw, but he wasn't ready to try dealing with anyone yet.

So he passed by the fort and kept walking. Apparently, the streets were emptier in the early morning than they were late at night. It suited him just fine.

Even so, habit pushed him to get out of the open, to find some secluded place to sort of his thoughts in. With the state of Freeside's buildings and the numerous piles of rubble impassable to casual travellers, more streets qualified as alleys than not, and it didn't take him long to pin down a shady alcove off the main street to brood in.

He eased himself down against the farthest building, heedless to the grime that smeared across his jacket. It might have been some kind of shop once. Or a house. There wasn't enough left to tell. Now it was just a quartet of walls, paint gone and wood worn down to a tired white. Surrounded from all sides but the front, he drew his knees up against his chest and dug his fingers into the ground.

Dana was dead. _Dana was dead._ Each individual realization was a hammer blow to his skull. The only person who he had ever cared about, the only person that had ever cared about _him_, was dead. The only person that gave his life any sort of purpose was dead.

He had no idea what to do anymore.

How could he _manage _without Dana? The question might have sounded strange if it wasn't so serious to him. He knew he could take care of himself. He was strong, capable, made to continue existing at all costs. Above laws, above order, above society. Logically, he shouldn't _need_ anyone else. But he couldn't picture a world without her – even now, when it stared him in the face. And even defining the question in his head made him feel sick with guilt, but he had to ask himself; what_ had_ Dana given him that made her so… so…

He buried his face in his hands. Oh god, he missed her.

He was force and she was direction. He had the power, but she always had the plans, the strength of will. She was right. She was _everything_. She was his conscience – and she was dead. What did that make him? What _would _that make him? Would he become a monster without anyone to keep him on the right path?

He swore then and there that he'd hold onto it for as long as he could. It was the only thing he had left of her. And he owed her that much. He'd made a promise to her that he'd be her brother and not a monster. This… this wasn't going to change that.

His thoughts fell silent for a while as he stared blankly into the distance.

She would have known what to do, too, came a sudden, morose realization. She always did – always _had_. She would have known exactly what to ask, where to go to, where to hide – maybe she didn't know Freeside like she did Manhattan, but an hour with her laptop and she could make any place hers. She always had plans, always had ideas; they had practically bubbled out of her. And he'd always relied on her for guidance. Hell, when he'd first woken up, the only thing on his mind had been how to get to Dana. That had become the sum total of his independent thinking – when killing things was not an option, the answer was always 'go to Dana and get her opinion'. And it had _worked_… for _then_. Now he was truly alone and there was no guidance left to receive. Where could he go from here? Where was he even supposed to begin?

_What to do, what to do…_

But he _did _have information, didn't he? He was letting himself get blinded by his own misery. He still had his resources. Those four thugs he'd consumed – they'd given him one hell of a trip afterwards, but they were still _people_. Just laced with poison. He frowned and closed his eyes, concentrating on their memories amidst the myriad others he'd collected. They were still fresh, new in his mind, even if diving into his head gave unusual resistance. The entire group seemed to be bottlecap collectors – what was _with _that, anyway – and together, the four of them had been addicted to all kinds of substances he'd never heard about. Two of them had lived in Freeside their entire lives – hell, one of them had killed a man with a pistol at nine years old, this place was _fucked up_. Another was from some place called Boulder City, and a fourth from Novac. He hadn't heard of either place, but then again, he'd been gone for two and a half centuries, and he got the feeling he was somewhere in the (ex-)American southwest.

But while they did give him a picture of the local geography – which was pretty much desert, desert, and more desert – there wasn't too much to learn, certainly not about the state of things. General lives of hardship came with a disinterest in the larger state of events, and there was nothing that useful, just a few rival gangs and their names… If anything, they weren't too different from the street thugs he preyed upon back in a more familiar world.

Then a flash of pain spiked through his head, and he saw flashes from a fifth life, a different life - brief glimpses of familiar metal walls. A Vault. But just as soon as it was there, it was gone, spiraling out of his reach. He gasped and opened his eyes. _What…_?

Now his head was hurting again – not in the currently-being-marinated-in-radioactive-material way, but the way he'd felt when he'd first woken up. He groaned, straightening up and rubbing his temples. His memories felt like they'd been stuffed in a blender and set on puree – that was enough rifling through them for now.

Hopefully, he could press Arcade for more information. There were a couple of things he wanted to know – where he was, who was in charge, technological advancements, and so on. Enough to build a picture of this new world and figure out where he could fit himself into it. That last one was going to be a bitch to ask, though. He couldn't exactly say that he was two hundred and seventy-two years old, and new tech to him might be centuries old to anyone here.

However, if there'd apparently been some kind of World War III that he'd slept through, it might be safe to say that humanity wasn't in shape to start mass-producing Bloodtox and viral detectors and all those sorts of things created specifically to ruin his day. There still seemed to be a lot of guns around, but so far he had worked out that cars and cell phones were a thing of the past, and those were pretty big.

It still wouldn't hurt to keep a low profile, though. At least until he knew who was in charge and how effectively they'd be able to hunt him.

Alex sighed. He'd have to go back. As much as he wanted to be alone, he needed information, and barring eating the locals and hoping they were more knowledgeable than the thugs, Arcade was his best link to it at the moment. He got to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants. Back to the fort it was.

Followers of the Apocalypse, now there was a strange name… but oh so fitting. What came after the end of civilization? Who was going to pick up the pieces?

It surprised him, though. Alex had seen a lot of humanity over his years – _waking _years – and little of it was good. The disaster zone of New York City had been a den of crime, of martial law and a constant churning struggle to survive. There hadn't been a lot of help to go around, and oftentimes, what few charity setups existed were preyed upon by gangs for their supplies. Other organizations hadn't wanted to touch the island at all in fear of the disease. He'd watched the city bleed for a long time before things at last looked up again.

By all means, this place should have been worse. And yet, charity was the first thing that he'd encountered here. Apparently, the end of the world was what it had taken to finally get humans to learn.

Or he'd just been lucky. Lucky. Ha, _that _was a laugh.

He passed by a few people as he retraced his steps. They kept their heads down and eyes averted, and he did the same. He could get used to that.

Those faded stone walls came into view far too quickly, and the gate followed soon after. He grimaced and steeled himself, then pushed it open with one free hand.

Compared to both the streets outside and the state of things last night, the interior was bustling with activity. Two rugged-looking, armed men stationed at the entrance nodded to him as he passed. He scowled and tugged his hood down lower, swerving to give all passerby a wide berth. How was he actually supposed to find Arcade? He might not even be here -

And then there was an impressive mohawk in front of his face. His eyes slowly travelled down the standout hairstyle to the frazzled face of the other doctor he'd met last night.

"Oh, thank god. Where have you _been_? I have been looking _all over the place_…"

Alex tuned her out, looking away and scanning the crowd again. Nobody he recognized; granted, that only included two people, and he was trying to ignore one of them.

He was forced to pay attention again when she suddenly grabbed his shoulder; he flinched, making to move away, but she seemed intent on keeping her grip. He grunted, fixing her with a cold glare, but she wasn't even looking at him – she was trying to steer him somewhere.

Not fond of being dragged, he shrugged off her hold a bit more harshly than necessary and followed as she led him through the fort, stopping once to rattle off some orders to another doctor. Indignance faded to dull curiosity and then to boredom, and he was about to ask her what the hell she wanted when she finally pulled him to a tent.

"Arcade!" she called. Alex peered inside, interested again.

"What is it _now, _Julie?"

The blonde man was alone inside, seated, an open book on his lap. He raised an eyebrow upon seeing the hooded stranger next to Julie. "I see you found him."

"Yes, and I'm getting down to business. I'm assigning this man to you. You're tending to him and taking responsibility for his health. _You,_" and she indicated Alex, who looked up mechanically, "are going to be getting your care and tests from Arcade, and if he's not delivering, let me know about it."

"What? Julie, just because I'm found him doesn't-"

"Look, Arcade, I'm busy enough trying to run this place without tending to every single patient. There's some huge water leak in the inner fort and we've got enough problems without it. You're looking after this guy for as long as he stays here. _Don't _argue," she snapped as Arcade opened his mouth, most likely to protest. "It'll do you some good. So unless the next words out of your mouth are 'I know where that missing spanner is', I don't want to hear them."

The doctor watched in dismay as Julie stormed out of the tent, muttering about introverts.

It was only once she was far out of earshot that Arcade heaved an enormous sigh. "Great, just great." Alex watched emotionlessly as the doctor shook his head several times, then glared at the wall.

"If we're going to be having this lovely relationship together, first things first. Are you done having hissy fits and running off while your doctor is patiently trying to explain things for your benefit?"

Maybe Alex's eyes looked about as dead as he felt, because the doctor shut up immediately when he finally looked back at him, and he hadn't even had to glare.

Arcade backtracked quickly. "Uh, hey." He frowned, grappling for words. "What… happened?" he finished lamely.

Alex opened his mouth, then closed it.

One would think that, as a creature who hid behind the skins and stored the memories of so many others, that Alex Mercer would be a natural actor. This was partway true – when playing a role, he was capable of focusing on a single personality and copying it with solipsistic intensity.

But when he wasn't actively hiding behind another person's mannerisms, Alex was not a very good liar. Without those specific human memories at the forefront, guiding his interactions by example, speech did not come naturally to him – definitely not the finer points of it. He hesitated too long, floundered for excuses; his mind preferred to come up with numerous ways to kill whoever he was speaking to than ways to do a halfassed job of convincing them. Da – he flinched, not a good time – _she_ had always teased him with it whenever he tried to skirt around issues with her.

So he ended up using most of the truth, although admitting even an abridged version of it to a stranger gnawed at him.

"I… remembered something," he began. Slowly; he was still constructing the story. "When you brought up a war…"

"And this would be…?"

"My sister died." His voice came out sounding like gravel. "…Recently. I just… didn't want to face anyone."

"I see. I'm sorry to hear that." Arcade's voice was neutral, but there was an edge of skepticism to his eyes. "Did you remember anything more?"

"No. Just… that."

"Mmm." There was an awkward pause – clearly, Arcade had just as much experience with dealing with emotional revelations as he did. Which was none. "Were you… close?"

There was something he didn't have to filter. "Very. She was all I had."

"I'm sorry," Arcade repeated. There was more feeling to it this time. "That had to have been hard."

Alex nodded. Silence reigned for a good minute after that; there was nothing to say.

Arcade eventually cleared his throat. "So, uh… about this."

Alex sighed. "Look, don't be worried about the whole looking after me thing. I look after myself. Don't think you're gonna believe me, but I'm fine. Except for not remembering much," he quickly added.

"Pardon me for having my doubts, then," Arcade said.

"I'm not going to take up your time," Alex insisted. When the doctor didn't look convinced, he tried another track. "Look, I'll come to you if I need anything, all right? If that other doctor asks anything, you're doing… fuck, I don't know, doctory things to me that she's expecting you to do. Seriously. I'm _fine._"

"I've never seen anyone get back on their feet so quickly," Arcade noted. "Not after something like that. You're in good enough shape to wander around, I guess. Still, I'm not convinced. I'm going to need to run some tests, if nothing else."

_Shit_. "And if I don't want you to?" There was a bit of a snarl to those words.

"I won't force you." Arcade raised one eyebrow. "Of course, I'll want to know _why_ you're so opposed to it. For an amnesiac, you seem awfully… keen."

The two stared at each other for a good half-minute.

"Look, I have a lot of questions," Alex finally said. "I'm really damn confused and I'd appreciate some info."

Arcade sighed. "If you're not going to run off on me again this time."

Alex just stared. Arcade frowned. "I'm sorry. That wasn't in very good taste. Although, before we begin… I never got your name."

"Alex. Alex Mercer." There was no harm in that. It wasn't like anyone was going to know it anymore.

"All right then, Alex… what did you want to know?"

_Where to begin…?_

"Tell me where we are," he decided. "I know this place is Freeside. I just don't know where that is. Or where any of this is."

"Well, to begin, we happen to be situated on the lovely planet of Earth…" At Alex's glare, Arcade cut to the point. "If you don't recognize the city, I question if there's even a point in knowing the state or country, but we're in the American southwest. Nevada, to be precise." He frowned. "If anything would ring a bell, it'd be this; you're right outside New Vegas."

"Las Vegas?" Alex said incredulously. From what he'd heard, Vegas had been a city to rival New York – smaller, but gaudier, flashier. Apparently, they had a really good nightlife, or something. Dana had talked about wanting to visit once they could just get Blackwatch off their backs. His fingers twitched – _no, don't think of that, don't think of that, something else – _

Point being, it was a _city_. Not a massive, truncated…

…wreck.

Oh.

"_New_ Vegas." Damn, Arcade had that suspicious look again. "Although yes, the place was known as Las Vegas before it was mostly destroyed in the war. Both Freeside and Westside are parts of the old city. The Strip, on the other hand, managed to escape most of the destruction. It's a slice of what the Old World used to be, or so I'm told. There are a few hotels and casinos that have recently been renovated and opened up for business. Freeside gets what's left of the gamblers once they've thrown away all their money."

Well, that would explain a lot about Freeside. The place really did have the build of a large city; just an absolutely destroyed one, like taking the very worst parts of Manhattan and making those cover the entire island. And this Strip… that tower he'd seen on the horizon, that must have been a part of it. Some small piece of the world he knew? He was going to have to check it out, for nostalgia if nothing else.

"What was this war, exactly? And when was it?"

Arcade sighed. "The world hadn't really been in a good state for a while before it happened. Overpopulation led to shortness of resources, and international relationships deteriorated over it. There had been tensions going on for a long time. The United States went pretty militaristic protecting its assets, and used the fear of Communist China to keep everyone following blindly. But when things got down to the very last oil reserve on the planet… it all boiled over. The bombs finally fell in late 2077. As I'm sure you can imagine, that was the end of it. Nobody was in any shape to fight after that."

"Why would they even do it?" Nuking Manhattan, he at least saw a modicum of reasoning behind, even if he didn't agree with it – Blackwatch had wanted to cauterize the infection, and the millions still alive on the island were considered acceptable collateral damage. But the entire world? "Couldn't they see what was going to happen?"

Arcade shrugged. "Well, that's the great question, now, isn't it? Nobody knows who fired first, but whoever it was…" He sighed. "_Damnatio memoriae."_

Alex didn't quite catch that last bit, but he thought he heard a Latin swear in there, which he agreed with. Even having seen all the devastation as its hard proof, it was hard to believe that people could have been that _stupid_.

"So… who's in charge now? The old government couldn't have survived that."

He thought Arcade's expression seemed distinctly odd for a second. "…No, they didn't… There's no single ruling faction in the States, now, if that's what you're thinking. Nobody has enough power or control for that. A lot of the American west is lawless, mostly the upper parts. But here, the NCR – New California Republic, excuse me – is in charge. Not as in charge as they'd like, mind. They're stretched thin. But they're the closest anyone has to law here. It's not a bad regime, once you get past all the bureaucratic red tape, hypocrisy, and the general inability to get anything done."

For a moment, Arcade looked like he was going to say more, but he must have decided against it.

He waited for Alex to say something else, but the hooded man just frowned, staring past him. The doctor looked rather uncomfortable as time dragged on. "So… any other questions?" he eventually tried.

Alex's eyes flickered up, but he didn't move his head. "…Not right now. Lot to take in."

"All right." Arcade hesitated, then returned to his book.

He hadn't gotten through more than a few paragraphs when Alex spoke again. "I… can help around this place, you know." The words came falteringly, if such a gravelly voice could sound unsure. "If you need it."

The doctor frowned. "The only thing you need to do is rest."

"Yeah, well, I'm not used to charity. You helped me when you didn't have to. I can respect that."

"Well, that's a… generous offer. But most of the work here that needs to be done requires skilled doctors. We're short on supplies, but not really unskilled labor…"

He _was_ a skilled doctor, but revealing that part of his skillset… he was already pushing things enough with this man, he could tell.

"…and there's not really anything that can be done about that," Arcade finished.

"What was that last part?" Things were so much easier when all the words he wanted to listen to were recorded in his brain.

Arcade sighed irritably. "I said, Freeside itself to be fixed."

Interesting choice of words. Alex's frown deepened. "How so?"

"Can't you see it?" The doctor sounded incredulous. "No, I suppose you can't. I've been here for nearly a decade. This place… it's a testament to human depravity. Vegas is its own perfect little bubble, or so I've heard, but the city around it is a den of vice – all the leftovers, the people without the caps to get into the Strip. People only live here because they can't get out, because there's nowhere else to go. You have gangs oppressing half the population, and drug lords trying to get the other half hooked on chems. And everyone who leaves the Strip just gets caught in the web. They've gambled all their fortune away, they're desperate; some turn to chems to forget, others go after anyone and anything they can find to get it back. It's a cycle, but nobody _sees_ it – or if they do, they don't care enough to break it."

He looked to Alex expectantly, but the hooded man was staring into space again, unresponsive.

"Well," he said, slightly miffed, "I do have research to get to, if you don't mind. If you need me, I'll be somewhere around the fort. Just ask around."

Mercer grunted in agreement, and Arcade strode out of the tent, taking his book with him.

Alone, Alex was left to mull over everything he'd learned. He knew it to be true – he could see it everywhere around him – but was so hard to accept.

The last act of mankind as he'd known it, the final strike of that great war… It would have been like the explosion he'd narrowly saved Manhattan from, but stronger – not muted by distance and water. And there would have been thousands, screaming from the sky to obliterate every major city and stronghold people huddled in.

2077… he grimaced. If Dana had been lucky, she hadn't lived long enough to see it. As awful as praying for her death was, he hoped she had died peacefully in her bed, not in terror as the skies rained one last act of fire.

What had her life been like? Had she married? Had children? Gotten her own news column, as she'd always dreamed? He was supposed to have been there, living it with her.

…Had she missed him? Mourned him? Forgotten him? Or would she have searched, and searched, and refused to let go with that ultimate tenacity of hers? Never letting herself rest, never letting go? Which would have been worse; never finding peace, or moving on?

These weren't healthy thoughts, and he knew it, but he couldn't stop them from clamoring in his skull. He had always known she would die some day, just like he knew that there were other planets in the solar system, but he'd never had to think about it – not as an inevitability. She was young! They were supposed to have _time!_

While he'd been focused on working things out, on piecing together the puzzle, he'd been able to keep his mind off of everything. But now, with nothing to do, without that shield of activity and purpose, there was nothing to keep the truth at bay.

To make things worse, whatever passed as his stomach was groaning in complaint. Hunger was starting to creep up on him again, and that brought with it an uncharacteristic nervousness. If everything was irradiated, as Arcade said, then he was effectively poisoning himself every time he consumed something. Rad-Away or no, he wasn't looking forward to going through that whole thing again.

Also guilt. Dana was dead and hunger was vying for his attention. He couldn't even mourn his little sister's passing without feeling his instincts.

But if Freeside was as overrun with criminals as Arcade said it was… he'd be doing them a favor by following his instincts, for once. No – he'd be _returning _a favor. He wasn't sure that he trusted the doctor, but the man had helped him when he'd been in a difficult place, and Alex took that seriously. Actual good intentions were altogether a novelty to him.

If Arcade wanted to see Freeside fixed… well, Alex was a destroyer, not a creator. But he'd do his part from the shadows, if it meant settling that debt.

So he slipped out of camp and began the hunt.

0o0o0

It had been maybe five days – Alex wasn't really counting. It really all boiled down to the same things, over and over again. Moving heavy objects around the fort, helping out with whatever odd jobs he was capable of; favors done partially out of a sense of debt and partially because he had nothing else to do. The doctors had learned not to ask where he went when he vanished for long stretches of time; perhaps in time somebody would link the decrease in local thugs to his arrival, but he preferred to keep his street-cleaning silent. Revealing himself as something superhuman would attract attention he just really didn't want to deal with right now. Of course, people were going to find the bodies – he had no idea what to do with what remained of the roving bands of drug addicts and lowlifes after he was done with them, since he knew better than to consume them all as he once would. He fed sparingly, paying careful attention to how he felt afterwards, and used the information he gleaned from his prey to locate more street gangs.

He'd worked out a rough idea of Freeside's state, and that was best summed up as 'bad'; bands of thugs and small gangs preyed on civilians and tourists heading to New Vegas, to the point where people felt the need to hire bodyguards to get from one end of Freeside to the other. The largest gang, the Kings that he'd encountered earlier, was apart from the rest – they attempted to keep the peace and served as an impromptu force of law. Most thugs tried to operate away from them, and paid careful attention to their affairs in order to do so. There wasn't much that grabbed his attention. Some tensions stirring up here, somebody falling into favor there – it was all out of context to him. But they apparently _had_ noticed his little tantrum and wanted to find whoever had wrecked the north gate. He wasn't sure whether to be amused or wary.

During those times, briefly, he could feel like himself again. But apart from when he could _hunt_, when he could throw himself into the web of information and his next target, time passed in an unchanging, listless cycle that he barely noticed. He just went through the movements and tried his hardest not to feel.

There was just… nothing. He couldn't let himself think, but what else could he do when there was nothing worthwhile to occupy his time? He was desperate enough for distraction that he was immersing himself in petty gang affairs and hunting down pathetic prey, and he knew it. It occupied him for as long as he could draw out the chase, but he felt just as listless – and vaguely disgusted at himself for it – afterwards.

Fortunately, something interesting finally came his way. Even if it took him a while to realize it.

It was on what he was pretty sure was the sixth day since he'd learned of Dana's death. He was out on Freeside's rooftops again, with nothing to do in the fort. These buildings were more delicate than the ones he knew from Manhattan – weakened with extreme age and already falling apart without his help, he'd quickly discovered that running atop them was just a quick way to finish the process. He chose his steps cautiously now, picking his jumps with extreme care. Perhaps the lack of ambient noise made this sneakier approach for the better. The streets below were a lot emptier than the ones he was used to, but that made it so much easier to peg the individuals he did see.

Such as the four men milling around the corner of this alley. Civilians did not lurk in alleys. Civilians did not continuously reference 'the boss' and 'the plan' as they argued with each other in hushed undertones, unaware of the eavesdropper lurking three stories up behind a chunk of broken drywall.

Thirty seconds and they still hadn't given him any reason to think they were innocent. That was enough for him; he stood up, flexing his fingers. He was getting hungry again, or at least close to the point he'd recently revised as being hungry enough to necessitate eating someone. He'd probably take one of these bastards and just punch out the rest. Consuming the whole band was a pretty appealing option, but he really didn't want to risk it; he hadn't flushed himself of radiation since that first time. He'd gotten used to the weak headache and vague sense of vertigo he'd been carrying for the past few days, but it was still there. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to ask for some more Rad-Away when he got back.

…Still, he was fucking _hungry_. Maybe he could get away with two…?

His inner debate on plans for lunch was cut off when the thugs abruptly began to move; running around a corner and positioning themselves against the wall. Had they seen him? He frowned, preparing to jump – it wasn't going to matter in a couple seconds anyway. They weren't getting away.

He was an instant from leaping down when he realized that they weren't alone in the alleyway. Two people were walking up the street that the four thugs had just scampered away from, a tall man and a shorter woman with a cowboy hat. A glance sideways showed the four concealed thugs drawing weapons. Some kind of ambush, unfolding right before him.

He knew better than to start eating people in front of impressionable, easily frightened, _loud_ civilians, so he drew back, scowling faintly. Count on some fucking idiots to ruin his lunch… of course, there was nothing _really_ stopping him from jumping down and doing whatever the fuck he wanted, but witnesses were annoying, especially when there wasn't really any justification to killing them. On that note, it was probably wrong to just stand by and watch as two people got mugged and possibly killed. Yeah, he could see Dana complaining about that. He could always go down to street level discretely and pretend to be a conveniently located bystander…

Then he noticed something that put that train of thought on hold. What he'd taken for two civilians… might not have been an accurate guess. The man was clad in some kind of mismatched metal armor and seemed better armed than any of the four thugs lying in wait, with an impressive-looking revolver in his hands and a knife in his belt. The woman who followed him was less outwardly imposing and noticeably unarmored, but she had a rifle slung across her back and he was pretty sure he spotted some kind of pistol in her hand.

Watching a slaughter was uninteresting, unless he was taking part in it. But a _fight_… that had the potential to be interesting.

So against his first impulse, he settled back and watched.


	6. Enter Stage Left

**Author's Note: I'd like to take a moment to thank my friend NanoMoose for letting me use her Courier in this story, and also helping me with the lines. Seriously, she's the writer I want to be when I grow up. I just hope I can do her and her character justice!**

* * *

Alex watched with keen interest as the pair unwittingly continued towards the ambush.

He wasn't going to interfere. The thugs might have outnumbered their prey, but the other two were armed, and that changed things. They had a chance; whatever happened now was fair game.

In his mind, he was working out the numerous different ways this could play out. The thugs were poised to get the first strike, and that was a big point in their favor, but were they aiming to kill or merely rob? Were they seasoned criminals, or were they fresh enough to hesitate at the critical point? The other two were experienced, if the way they carried themselves was any indicator. The man had a knife for close quarters, but most of the thugs had small handguns, the sort of thing that could be easily used in close quarters. At a distance, the armored man probably had the most powerful weapon, and the woman's rifle was likely second to it, but the lowlifes were almost certain to strike when the pair were right in front of them, milking the element of surprise…

So he was shocked when the quartet dashed out from their hiding spot when their targets were only halfway to them.

Everything happened quickly, but the rooftop observer missed none of it. It was one thing to make amateur mistakes. But Alex was a predator, sharp and wild, and he _knew_ how these things worked, how they looked and sounded and _felt_. This… was off. That tension, that readiness to kill – some intangible _something_ wasn't there. A closer look at the four unveiled that only two of them had their weapons up – one of them was still drawing and the last still had a holstered pistol. And the two that weren't being fatally slow… they weren't aiming, weren't tracking the targets with their guns. They were _posturing._

And they'd said something about a boss…

Suspicious, he looked back to the other two. The woman was in the process of aiming, leaning back in a shooter's stance, but the man was quicker. He reacted instantly, firing off three very wide shots before they had even stopped. The four men crumpled to the ground, clutching their chests; a brief burst of red sprayed out from each.

Yep. Definitely a setup. And not even a particularly good one. Alex knew what it looked like to be shot, and this wasn't it – hell, the guy didn't even fire enough times to take them all out. He was holding up a hand now; the woman hesitated, but eventually lowered her gun.

"I knew this place was trouble," he said, just smug enough to make Mercer's teeth grind. "But no worries. Nothing I can't handle. See, if you'd hired one of those other hacks at the gate, well… who knows?"

Alex sighed mentally. People were... blunted, any trace of instinctive keenness washed out of them by simple lives and lack of adversity. They blundered through those little clues, the tell-all details, only _seeing _when the truth bit or clawed or screamed at them. Of course, she'd buy the gallant rescue, accept that her quick-witted bodyguard had saved the day without a moment's doubt. He didn't know what the other guy was getting out of it – money, sex? Definitely something. The whole show wasn't just for fun.

"You fired three shots and four of them fell down. Neat trick!"

Once again, he was surprised. She'd _noticed. _The woman's voice was high, clear, and breezy; colored with amazement and admiration, but he could hear the sharp edge beneath. She was putting on airs – just as much a show as the one that her 'bodyguard' was trying to pull on her.

"Er, noticed that, did you?" A human might have mistaken her keen gaze as he spoke as rapt interest, but Alex recognized it as a fellow predator's stare. She was spotting a weakness and picking it apart. "I aimed for the soft tissue of one of the thugs to hit the man behind him."

"Wow, you must be really good. I've never done that before!"

"Yes, well, I am a professional." Alex didn't miss the way he fidgeted when he said that, and he was fairly certain that the woman didn't, either.

"How did you know they'd be trouble?" she asked innocently, tilting her head; a lock of deeply red hair slipped out from underneath her hat. "You know, when you saw those guys on the main road. And then when you ran ahead."

"I've seen their type before. Never up to anything good. Shame they had some guys here, too, but I took care of that. Saw them from a mile away, too. I have very good instincts. Comes with being the best in the job, right? Heh heh."

Alex almost laughed aloud. _If you had any idea what instincts were, you'd look up._

"Wow. You think we should get moving, then?"

"Much as I enjoy your company, I'm afraid we should." He smirked at her; the expression could best be described as 'greasy'. "But you can look me up again any time you want." Okay, Alex definitely didn't miss the wink there. _Ugh._

He waited for the inevitable blow, for her to pin the conman with all the information she'd clearly amassed and call him on his ruse. But she just kept smiling beatifically, nodding and lining her words with _just_ the right amount of awe.

The man was heading off, but the woman wasn't done yet. She hung back, lingering around the bodies. Intrigued, Alex watched her closely. She knelt over one of the fallen thugs, feeling at his vital points. Then she rummaged around on his chest, fingers nimbly darting across his clothes. After a few seconds, she picked up something small and plastic and inspected it. She wiped off the red drops that still clung to it, lifting them to her face. Alex didn't miss the small grin that played across her face before she stood up and hurried back to the faux bodyguard.

He had to strain to hear the words, distant as they were now. They were as innocent and airy as the breeze.

"Thank you so much! You're a marvel. Never felt safer. I'll tell my friends _all_ about you."

Alex was no literary buff, but he had no doubt there was a double meaning to that last bit.

He didn't hear the other man's reply, not over the crackle of trash fires and garbage rolling in the breeze. And then they were gone, on with their lives. He sighed. The game went on, and he didn't even get to see the ending. And it had been interesting enough to watch, for once.

The woman had surprised him with her shrewdness – perhaps even impressed him. But it made sense, he guessed. The people here were much more rugged than the soft, complacent idiots he'd known back in his world. They knew death, just as he knew death and Manhattan had tried to pretend it didn't exist. There was a certain keenness that came with rough living.

Well, it was good to know that intelligence wasn't dead. Even if people's general stupidity played to his advantage, there was something heartening to knowing that not everyone was a complete idiot. Things would be too damn boring otherwise.

"Are they gone?" somebody hissed from below.

Alex glanced back down. The thugs were getting back to their feet, their role in the whole misconstrued setup done with. And they were alone. Alone was good. Alone was… he licked his lips. Alone was promising.

But it was probably a better idea for his continued anonymity to hunt at late night or early morning, even if his stomach gurgled in complaint at the prospect. People were apparently pretty used to murder here, but he doubted his particular ways of committing it would be so banal to any witnesses. If any of them managed to scream, their leader and that tricky woman might still be close enough to be in earshot.

Might be…

He almost left. Almost. He was ungodly hungry and the whole situation just dripped opportunity, but there could be people nearby and he was probably due for some of that Rad-Away stuff again, it was broad daylight out, and a hundred other nagging things told him what he didn't want to hear – that he should just slink away and wait for a better time.

The lowlifes were talking amongst themselves. "And just like that, the boss nails another sucker. Hah. It never gets old."

"I don't know, man. Did you hear that bitch? Way too fucking cheerful. Didn't like the sound of her. She's trouble."

Alex glared down at the particular offender. It seemed that not everyone was as easily fooled as their ringleader had been. Or maybe they were just throwing insults around. But no, at least one of them had felt something was off about her act. If they felt threatened by that woman, they might try to kill her later to ensure her silence… _if_ they were still around to try it. He was present and wholly armed with the means to correct that. It wasn't like anyone was going to miss them, save one asshole… oh, forget the justifications. He wanted to eat somebody, and he wanted to eat somebody _now_. Maybe several somebodies. But definitely now. The 'now' part was non-negotiable.

It was a group of thugs. He'd seen their like all over Freeside. Arcade had given it straight – it was criminal activity that kept the city broken. He'd be doing everyone a favor by cleaning up the streets. If anyone _objected_ to that, he'd either break for it or stay for dessert, depending on who caught him.

His stomach growled its agreement, and his conscience could find no logical objection to that.

"Aw, drop it."

"I'm serious," the second speaker insisted. "She was feeling me up like a doctor or some shit. And I think she found the blood pack."

"You sure, man?"

"Completely. We should get Orris before she goes too far."

Alex made up his mind and slid his legs over the edge of the building, dropping down to the street with a deceptively casual air. Yet another act - one he donned just for the relish in casting it off.

"Hi, guys," he grinned.

_Lunch is served._

0o0o0

Cain grinned as she hurried out of the alleyway, coat pockets jangling behind her.

Okay, maybe the bottlecaps stuffed down her coat had been a bit over the top. But it had just been too perfect of an opportunity. The guy had his eyes closed and couldn't move to stop her without blowing the gig even if he _had_ felt her picking his pockets. Besides, it wasn't like he'd gotten them _honestly._ And he'd have other things to worry about soon enough.

The whole thing had been too easy, almost easy enough to be suspicious. The way the Kings had described Orris, she'd come expecting a professional. Not some amateur with an act so thin a blind mole rat could see through it. It was something about Vegas; it attracted suckers, dupes and patsies like a bright light attracted insects. Maybe that explained all the neon. She could understand the Kings' antipathy toward Orris better, at least - losing business to that class of scum really had to be humiliating.

The only thing about any of it that hadn't been second-hand _embarrassing_ had been...strange. Bad strange. There had been the _slightest_ feeling of discomfort back there, almost like she was being watched. That might have just been the holes in her head acting up, though. Could never be too sure these days.

But it was all over now, and her part in the whole job was done with. All save for the shouting – and the money. Blue coattails flapped after her as she made her way down Freeside's main street, back towards the old school that the Kings called their own. A few peddlers called out to her as she hurried past, picking her way around wrecked cars and debris.

It was mercifully cooler inside the King's School of Impersonation, and she lifted up her shades, tucking them under her hat. Pacer scowled as she passed, and she gave him her sweetest, most syrupy smile in return. So the King _had _talked to him about that little habit of charging visitors to see him. She'd have paid good caps to see the look on his face during that little chat.

She made her way into the theater, quickly spotting the King. She gave him that; the man knew how to own a room. Rex, his cyberdog, lay curled at his side; he shifted his head and whimpered softly at her approach. Another one of the gang members was speaking with him, and she hung back around the door, casually eavesdropping.

"…turning up lately," the guy was saying.

The King looked up, following Rex's line of sight. His eyes quickly landed on Cain; she looked away, rather than try to interrupt him. He had to know the conversation was quite audible from where she stood. He motioned for her to wait, then continued.

"Any of ours?"

Whatever it was, he didn't think it needed to be concealed from her. That was interesting. The man shook his head. "No. Just street trash so far. But whoever it is, they're… it's not right. Violent doesn't begin to describe it... You haven't seen these bodies..."

The King frowned. "I don't like this. You sure this isn't a one-time thing?"

"No. It's been going on for the past few days. Whole gangs, just torn _apart_."

"I'll send some lookouts, then. I really don't like having somebody like this running around Freeside… but there's not much else we can do, unless our mystery killer moves on from lowlifes to upstanding people. You did good in bringing this back to me. Go out, buy yourself a drink."

The unknown King thanked his boss and quickly left the room, hands stuffed in his pockets. Cain took it as her cue to step forward.

The King ran a tired hand across his face as she approached. "Ah, you're back. What did you find?"

Cain launched straight into it. "Orris was running a scam." She paused, frowning. "Not a convincing one, either. He had a bunch of lackeys and he was staging attacks on his clientele, then pretended to save them." She tilted her head. "Personally, I don't know why they'd re-hire him. He was a dick."

"Oh?" The King reached down to Rex, scratching the dog between his shoulderblades. "That'd definitely match up with what we've heard. I'll send some of my boys to pull him off the streets… you've done good work here. I won't forget that."

Cain smiled and nodded. This was either the part where she got caps, or the part where she got shooed away.

"All right, so that's just the trial run…"

She tried not to look too disappointed. The King's regard was worth something, but she'd been hoping it would be the kind of something that clinked.

"Now I know I can trust you, so the real work can begin. Truth is, I got another job for you, but I need to run a little investigation of my own first." The King leaned back, frowning. "Got different people telling me different things, and I need to clear it up. Come back to me in a day or so, all right? I should be ready then."

"Okay. I'll be back tomorrow!"

She gave the King a little wave and Rex a quick pat before walking away. Okay. Caps were still on the table. She could live with that.

Freeside's sweltering, heavy air rolled across her as she stepped out of the Kings' school and into the lovely Mojave heat. She adjusted her sunglasses a bit, trying to lessen the glare, but that only made the Strip's brightly-adorned front gate leap out instead, a few hundred meters away. Taunting her. She glared back at it, the pompous bastard.

So close, but so far away. She knew that, but _fuck_ if it wasn't irritating as all get-out right now.

Well, if she had a day to kill… she sighed. She'd plumbed Freeside for every paying job she could find, and she still didn't have the two thousand caps she needed to get into the Strip. The King was the only decent lead she had around here at this point for work, and if he wanted her to wait, she didn't really have a choice. Which left her with another day spent hanging around Freeside. And she'd never liked lingering in one place for long.

She could spend the day at the Atomic Wrangler, but that would probably be detrimental towards the whole 'saving caps' thing. Everything _fun_ was.

There _had_ been that little nugget of information – that there was apparently some kind of crazy killer around Freeside. Cain pondered this. On one hand, it probably meant caps. But on the other, she'd already dealt with enough of 'crazy killer' types to last several lifetimes over the past few weeks. She wasn't sure when her life had gotten so _insane _– okay, she _did _know when, that fucking bullet probably had a curse on it or something – but it was welcome to stop any time now.

So no. The crazy killer guy could go and keep doing his crazy homicidal stuff as much as he wanted. Preferably somewhere far from her. She was a courier, not a vigilante, for god's sake.

At this rate… unless the King had a _lot_ of errands he needed run, she was going to have to leave Freeside to get the caps for the gate. That really rubbed her. She'd slogged her way through all kinds of hell to get here, and having to walk away when she was so close to Vegas that she could taste it left a nasty taste in her mouth. And Benny was a slippery bastard; she'd only made her way this far after a roundabout chase all over Nevada. The longer she stalled, the more time he had to move on. _Again._ She had her reasons to expect Benny to stay, but if she finally showed up at his casino and she didn't see his checkered ass right there, ready for some karmic brain surgery, she was going to do… something. Probably a loud and screamy something. She'd figure that out later.

She just wanted this whole chapter of her life over with. With a sigh, Cain checked her packs. She was running low on stims, and given how many things in the Mojave seemed hell-bent on biting her, shooting her, burning her, slicing her, and beating her with rolling pins lately, getting some splints probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Well, she had time to kill, and she knew the best place to get those things. She liked the Followers. They weren't trying to beat her up, extort her for caps, throw her in jail, or tie her up and shoot her over an unbelievably sketchy casino chip, and that was more than she could say for pretty much everyone else in the desert. It was a refreshing change of pace from the norm. _Especially _in Vegas.

From what she could tell, they genuinely wanted to help people – real cures and real results, not just peddling snake oil to the masses. And they threw their whole lives into it – hell, they only charged patients that could afford them. She could never live that kind of life, but she respected them hugely for it.

…With any luck, they might have some more work that needed doing, too.

She slung her pack back over her shoulders and began the walk. The Fort it was.


	7. Chance Encounters

_Home sweet home._

The thought that flitted through Alex Mercer's head was a sarcastic one, as he stared unhappily at the semi-crowded fort around him. What he wouldn't have given for a cluttered Manhattan apartment with grey carpet and a battered swivel chair with – _no, don't think of that, don't think of that_. He swallowed convulsively, trying and failing to dispel the sudden tightness in his throat.

Wearily, he lifted his head. Apart from nailing down another tent, which he'd done this morning, there were no odd jobs around that he could help with – nothing he could occupy himself with.

He'd given in and allowed himself two of the four idiots in the alley, being extra careful _not_ to eat the green glowy gun this time. He had to admit, he was curious about them – he'd seen them fire, and they looked like something out of a science fiction movie – but glowy things were radioactive and he didn't want to get too close.

Consuming had given him a headache, or at least sharpened the preexisting one that had been growing over the past few days, but he'd been nowhere near falling apart like last time. Maybe that tenacious adaptability of his was kicking in. He wasn't going to complain, but he wasn't in the mood to chance things, either. For safety's sake, he'd asked for more Rad-Away as soon as he'd gotten back, taking care not to destroy the bathroom this time.

Now he was leaning against a wall, watching the Followers and downtrodden patients mill about from his relatively comfortable spot in the shade. Julie Farkas was milling around the main tent. He spotted a few other doctors he was learning to recognize by face but had no name to place to them, but Arcade was nowhere to be seen.

The old fort was busy, but it wasn't the interesting kind of busy – more the monotonous kind of busy. Alex liked neither business nor monotony, but he didn't really have many options at this point.

Movement at the front gate drew his eyes, and he blinked in shock. Walking into the fort was unmistakably the woman he'd seen not even an hour ago. He had no doubt it was her – her dark blue coat stood out like a beacon in comparison to the leather jackets or grimy rags everyone else in Freeside wore, and he wouldn't miss that cowboy hat anywhere. From this angle, it was easier to make out some of her features. Her red hair was either short or pulled back in a bun; the hat made it difficult to tell. A rifle was slung across her back, and a few packs hung from her shoulders and waist. He was surprised to note that her skin was very pale – she was almost as white as he was, something he hadn't seen in a while. Nearly everyone here was dyed tan from the sun.

She strode over to Julie Farkas, numerous bags jangling. The head doctor quickly spotted her and moved to meet her halfway.

"Oh, welcome back! Good to see you again. Did you need medical assistance?"

"Nope," the woman chirped back. "No debilitating injuries today!"

Julie chuckled. "That's good to hear. So, what can I do for you?"

"Well, I was hoping to buy some medical stuff. I'm running a bit low."

The doctor _hmm_ed a bit. "Tell you what. You've done a lot of good work around here. Ronte and Hoff have been a great help around Freeside since you helped them kick their habits. You would not believe the mess he managed to fix in the womans' bathroom around here… I'd thought it was a lost cause, the water main had practically exploded." She coughed. "Anyway. You've helped us a lot here. How many stims do you need? If it's not that much, I can just give you some."

Alex missed the next few exchanged sentences as he pondered this. Apparently, this woman got around – not only was she breaking up scams, but she was doing work for the Followers as well? Who was she? Neither he nor any of the thugs he'd eaten recognized her, but he wondered if he hadn't seen her before at some point over the past few days as a face in the crowd.

He was broken out of his thoughts when the pair began to move, Julie leading the woman across the clearing. He recognized their destination as the supply tent; he idly watched them move from his spot against the wall.

Apparently, the woman felt his stare, or he was just a lot more noticeable than he'd have liked. About halfway there, she abruptly craned her neck in his direction. With her shades, it was impossible to make out her expression; he stared back expressionlessly until she looked away again.

The two vanished inside the tent for a while, and he let his eyes wander for a couple of minutes when they reappeared; Julie heading back to her post, and the unknown woman turning her head this way and that, as if searching for something.

His eyes narrowed when, instead of heading for the gate, she made a beeline straight to him. He shifted, warily tracking her movement as she passed tent after tent without changing course, clearly heading for him.

"Hey, you're not a Follower either, are you?"

He started at the sound of her voice. Damn it, she was definitely speaking to him. Did he not look menacing enough? He still couldn't see past her shades, and that gave her the advantage – was she picking him apart as thoroughly as she had that conman of a bodyguard? She wouldn't _know _– but could she look at him and feel that flash of primal fear, single him out and just feel that something wasn't right?

"How could you tell?" he grated, keeping his voice guarded.

She simply shrugged. "You don't have that look. That combined compassion for all living things and cynicism about their many, you know... foibles." She made a wide gesture, motioning towards the many recovering addicts and destitute gamblers wandering the fort. "And you don't have a lab coat. Kind of a giveaway. How'd you wind up here? You work for them, maybe?"

It was Alex's turn to shrug. "…I guess." He sort of did, he supposed, after a moment's thought, but it wasn't exactly official.

Unfortunately, she didn't seem to want to drop the topic so quickly. "Pretty nice of you," she remarked. "They could really use the help, Julie's been telling me. Not many people get out of Vegas in better shape than when they went in. What do you do for them?"

Alex almost snorted. _Nice? I'm not a philanthropist._ "Odd jobs," he said aloud, voice flat and uninviting. "Lifting things, fixing, moving. Manual work. Whatever needs doing."

He couldn't full well say what he _really_ did to help out, largely because even the Followers didn't know about it. And he was relatively certain they wouldn't be too pleased if they found out.

"Yeah?" She frowned. "Wouldn't catch me doing that, too much physical exertion. When you're a courier, you get to set a weight limit on your burdens. So that's what I do. Package courier, I mean. The name's Cain, by the way. I'm new here. You ever been to Vegas, Mister…?"

"Mercer. Alex Mercer." God, this Cain woman really liked to listen to her own voice, didn't she?

He frowned a bit. A package courier. That was… underwhelming. He'd been expecting a mercenary, or a travelling… something. But mailmen generally didn't carry rifles around, and they definitely didn't pick apart scam rings. No, there had to be more to her than that. She kept a good poker face, but he was sure she was keeping secrets just as he was.

His expression soured at what the thought of seeing Vegas brought up. Dana had always wanted to see the city with her own two eyes… whether to experience it or to write about it, he didn't know. With his sister, the two things had sometimes been one and the same. "No, I haven't."

The stream of questions began anew. Alex reeled. "Is it all right if I call you Alex? Or do you prefer Mercer? Where you from? I'm here from out west. Got delayed on a job trying to get into Vegas - oh," her flood of queries halted in what might have been consideration, though she could just have easily been masking triumph. It really was impossible to tell. "You okay there? Whatever I said, I'm sorry."

"It's fine," he said gruffly, brain struggling to catch up on everything she'd said. It was like talking to five people at once, and he was slipping. Conversations were never his forte to begin with. "Not your fault. I guess. Uh. Alex is fine. Or Mercer. Don't care."

Where was he from? New York was the obvious answer, but he held his tongue. He had no doubt that that naming such a long distance was going to lead to the question 'how'd you get here', and that was something he was still trying to figure out himself.

"East. I'm from the east," he settled for, not entirely untruthfully. "Just got here, myself."

Her eyebrows shot upwards. "You serious? Through Legion territory? Hell. The Followers must have been a shock, valuing the sanctity of life and learning and all that. Haven't met a Legionnaire yet who gives a shit. _Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." _As if to offset the string of Latin, she stuck her tongue out peevishly. "And now if I say that, people think I learned it off them. Assholes."

Alex floundered for a beat. Too long. He _thought_ he had a decent grip on the state of things around here, but apparently there were still major pieces missing, if Cain's reaction was anything to go by. Worse, he didn't know where this Legion's territory was other than 'east', so he couldn't make up a vague path to say he took around it. And he _could_ just say that they hadn't bothered him, but now there was _another_ unknown in this new world's power structure and not knowing didn't sit well with him.

He glanced up. She was watching him expectantly, eyes still hidden behind those shades. Damn it, it was too late to bluff his way past this. He scowled and shook his head. "…I've never heard of a Legion."

A small part of his mind that managed to be unconcerned with getting cornered by an overly vociferous woman frowned at her Latin. Was it suddenly a second language or something? Why was it popping up so much?

"Never met Caesar's Legion? You sure? Bunch of jerk-offs in red armor like they watched too many history vids. Think they're the Roman Empire. Tie people to wooden crosses and stick heads on pikes. You never heard of them?" She eyed him. "They and the NCR have been having a staring contest over Hoover Dam for the past five years."

"No." He mulled it over for a few seconds. "How indiscriminate is this head-piking?"

"I think sometimes they decapitate a few slaves just so they have enough for symmetry," she said, deadpan, "but in honesty the recognizable heads get the treatment. Can't just pike some random head. That would look like they didn't know anyone worth piking. A scare tactic, right?"

Alex's expression twisted. "_Slaves?"_

Alex Mercer wasn't stupid. He might not have been the greatest planner and forward thinker, but he was no fool. He knew what he was, and he knew where he stood. He wasn't a hero; he was humanity's collective monster under the bed, and doing his damnedest to stay docile and unnoticed was the best thing he could do for the rest of the world. And maybe it was the way Redlight had stolen its victims' wills, subjugating them for Elizabeth Greene's personal use. Maybe it was the way his free will had been the only thing standing between his own existence and that one. Maybe it was the way Blackwatch had clamped down on New York City, and maybe it was the look on Dana's face that first night as a soldier hoisted her up by the throat in her apartment. In the end, it was all the same. He wasn't going to lie to himself and say that he cared about the millions of individual humans, but the concept of taking another's will rankled him – had always done so.

Cain took a faltering step backward, her easy stance tensing. "Slaves. On the war front, anyone they capture gets drafted in being a Legionnaire, if you're a healthy man, or into giving birth, if you're a woman who can bear children, or plain old manual labor for everyone else. Same goes for their allies, too, just not by force." Her lips went thin and tight beneath her sunglasses, all joking gone. "Draw up contracts and everything. Even saw one for a pregnant woman. Got really _specific _about the kid she was carrying."

She looked away, making a one-armed shrugging movement as if to shove away the memory, and let out a sharp breath. "Assholes." Her gaze went back to him. "So you've really never even heard of them?"

Alex swore continuously under his breath for a couple of seconds, switching languages when he ran out of new words. "Oh, that is just so much bullshit," he said darkly, once he was done with a tirade that would have made his sister proud. "Let me get this straight. They use women as _breeders_?" Cain nodded in affirmative, and his mind _boiled_ at the thought of Dana being forced to… okay, if he didn't drop that thought _right now_, he was going to sprout claws and start tearing the fuck out of something. He inhaled slowly. "No, I haven't heard of them." His eyes flashed. "But I might just pay them a visit now."

"Visit and do _what_?" she said, her tone abruptly sharp. "Not that I don't empathize - you wanna kick Caesar in the balls, you'd have to get in line, and every time I see a Legionnaire setting foot in the Mojave, I make sure he comes back minus at least one head. But, uh, is 'visiting' always your reaction to huge armies of fanatics? You'd have to make a hell of a lot of stops."

A huge army, huh? He could get behind that. Sooner or later, he was going to run out of thugs. Planning his food supplies ahead of time never hurt. Pickings had gotten much scarcer once Blackwatch had drawn out of Manhattan, and scouting out street trash had been a chore in and of itself; it required prolonged observation to avoid picking off a civilian in the wrong place, rather than a Blackwatch uniform quickly and easily identifying a person as acceptable fast food. He wouldn't mind the labels again. Or the endless supply of people. Once he'd gotten a steady supply of Rad-Away, at least.

"Kill all of them," he said bluntly. "What else? Sounds like they deserve to die to a man. I'm pretty good at that kind of thing."

"What, you got an undeclared nuke somewhere? An army of your own?"

Alex's scowl deepened. "Not your business."

She glared back at him. "It's my business if you run off and wind up crucified because of something I told you. I prefer to get people killed on _purpose_, not by accident. The Followers are tetchy about dead volunteers."

He glowered. This conversation was taking a direction he wasn't liking. "I guarantee you, I'm not going to be dying anytime soon. And I'm _not_ a volunteer."

He glanced away, debating on whether or not he should just walk out on this woman. It was more of a compromise than anything else; tattered human memories nagged at him that such an action would be rude, while primal cornered instincts wanted to remove the threat. But by looking around for that quick moment, he found his lifeline on a rare stroke of fortune. A tired-looking Arcade Gannon had arrived in the fort, heading away from the main gate.

Alex waved for him, desperately. The doctor noticed the jerky, awkward gesture and began making his way towards his patient. Turning back to Cain, he motioned toward him. "Look, if you have questions, this guy's my doctor, Arcade. He can answer them a lot better than I can. Bye."

Without giving her a chance to object, he turned on his heel and strode away.

"If I see your head on a pike, I'll wave!" she indignantly called after him. Alex rolled his eyes. Likely.

"Just save me from her," he muttered to Arcade in passing, and then high-tailed it out of the fort as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He wanted to be somewhere inaccessible once she was done violating the doctor's brain. Alex frowned. Did he feel guilty about handing off his problem to Arcade?

…Nope. No, he didn't, he decided a moment later. He was just relieved.

The information had been useful, and she'd given him a lot to think about, but Jesus tapdancing _Christ _that woman wouldn't shut up. And she was keen. Too keen. Cain was like a good explosion; he could appreciate her from afar, but he didn't want to get up close.

Cain... that was an interesting name. He'd eaten a wide enough array of people to recognize scripture. The first murderer, huh… He snorted. If talking somebody to death was actually possible, then she'd fit the bill quite nicely. Otherwise, he didn't see it.

She had been interesting, he had to give her that. A mail courier who was armed to the teeth, fought against some crazy slaving regime, and was good enough at picking people apart that she might have made some headway with him, if he hadn't had an opportunity of _deus ex Arcade Gannon._ Interesting enough to merit watching? Maybe. From a safe distance .

Then again, he thought as he slipped through the gates, if he never listened to anyone talk that much again, it would be too soon.

0o0o0

Lips pursed, Cain watched this 'Alex' character go, hurrying out of the fort like he was walking on hot coals.

She was pretty good at telling when somebody was watching her. It was an instinct that you needed, in her line of business – if you couldn't tell when it was safe to make a move and when to stay your hand, bad things happened. Several different stints in numerous NCR jails had pounded this lesson into her skull.

So when that same prickling, uncomfortable feeling from earlier had hit her again, she'd listened to it. And lo and behold – there _was_ somebody watching her. A weird, dark-looking sort of somebody. Approaching him had made that much clear straight off the bat.

At first, she'd just been prodding, trying to see if this strange specimen actually _spoke_, instead of just standing around being all menacing and growly. If clipped, awkward replies counted, she _guessed_ she could say he did.

And then she'd hit jackpot with the Legion. Pointing out what should have been common knowledge… she could practically see the gears in his brain grind to a halt. Either he was lying, or he genuinely hadn't known.

If he was lying, he was one of the best damn liars she'd ever met, and she found that a little hard to believe with how blunt Alex had been in everything else. But to not know about the Legion… she shook her head in disbelief. They were everywhere, _especially_ east of Nevada. And from personal experience, they stuck their machetes and various stupid hats into everyone's business. Where did this guy come from, Happy Cloud Fairy Land?

She remembered the image of Alex Mercer, arms folded, scowling like some avatar of scowliness, and saved that thought for later.

Her first thought was that he might have been a Legion spy, doing a particularly stupid (but inept) job of feigning stupidity. But they tended to stick out more, and she had no idea what a Legionnaire would want with the Followers of the Apocalypse anyway.

His reaction to finding out the Legion kept slaves disproved _that_, though. This guy really had no idea. He'd somehow managed to sneak through Colorado without seeing a single glimpse of red. _How_ the fuck that was possible, she had no idea. But it had revealed two things; one, there was something wrong with Alex's base of knowledge. And two, he was _simmering _with violence.

She'd seen a lot of things, but she had a feeling those eyes might end up cropping up in her nightmares. If you could condense pure murderous intent and shape it into a person, Alex Mercer was probably the result. Something about him in that stilted moment had made her skin crawl.

Having one more person in the world against the Legion wasn't a bad thing, but jesus, the guy took slavery like it was a personal insult. It was like the guy was Boone. But even more crazy and scowly. Damn, how was that even possible?

…Great. She clapped a hand to her forehead. She'd found another Boone. Were they _breeding_?

But Boone at least had his reasons. She couldn't really blame the man for how he'd turned out, not after she'd found that _depraved_ contract in Jeannie-May's safe. Reading that... she shook her head. It had just been _surreal._ Whereas Alex… he didn't know about them, so there wasn't any grudge there. But his first thought upon hearing about the Legion's practices was 'massacre them all by myself'. Overlooking the fact that any single person had as much of a snowball's chance in the desert sun to take down a regime, he hadn't exactly struck her as the heroic type. Or the anything type, really.

Prying further had made him nervous, in a scowly, angry kind of way. She shouldn't have pressed so hard; maybe he wouldn't have made a break for it if she'd played her hand a little more carefully.

She'd be lying if she said that Alex hadn't disturbed her, but more than anything, he was a guy who was hiding something. And she wanted to know what that was, damn the consequences. She turned her eyes on the other doctor, this Arcade.

He was tall. Thin. Blond. Slightly-harassed gentleness, the kind that all the long-time Followers picked up after a while of thankless work, and a habit of stooping just a little as if he's trying not to stand out. Eyes the exact opposite of Mercer's in everything but color - steady and kind and calm. She wondered if the glasses were for show or not.

He had one hell of a plasma pistol, though. Everyone with half a brain went armed in Freeside, but usually not so fancy.

If the two of them knew each other… well, people were awful good at divulging information about others when they didn't realize they were doing it. She liked to think wheedling was one of her best traits.

"Arcade, was it?"

The doctor nodded, still looking confused. "Yes?"

She gave him her sweetest smile. "Nice to meet you. I'm Cain. Are you from around here?"

* * *

*Cain's Latin; 'they make a desert and call it peace'


	8. The Die is Cast

Wandering the streets of Freeside was starting to become a hobby for Alex. While it wasn't quite boring enough to tempt him to take up crocheting, the rare glimpses of excitement it brought were few and far between. There were only so many people that needed killing, after all, and already the pickings were getting thinner.

The sun had set maybe half an hour ago. He had no idea what the actual time was – all the clocks he'd seen over the past few days had been frozen at about 9:45. That one had taken him a while to figure out. It was… difficult… to acknowledge that most everything he was looking at was over two hundred years old, especially when they came from an era that had been close to his own only a week ago. Objectively, he knew it was the case, but his memories told him that he lived in the twenty-first century – hell, he had _hundreds _of memories that had lived then. The two-century disconnect was hard to grasp even _without_ the horrific connotations attached. But the scientists in him were quick to answer the question, once he realized that every clock he'd seen had predated the war. The nuclear bombs would have caused widespread electromagnetic disruption, frying all exposed electronics. In the case of the clocks, the blast had literally left a permanent record in time.

It was morbid, but Alex was well inured to death. All except one case, anyway – one case he prayed had taken place before she'd have gotten the chance to see those clocks stop.

He'd been avoiding the fort ever since he left. Odds were, Cain was long gone; it had been a few hours. But harassment by talkative people – especially _smart_ talkative people – was high on his threat list and he wasn't taking chances. The next time somebody started gabbing to him, it was a tossup on whether or not body parts started flying.

He was still getting used to how _empty_ the streets were in Freeside – or maybe it was just a symptom of a post-apocalyptic world, not just the area. He was used to crowds that moved and flowed nonstop; shifting, roiling masses of humanity that flooded the streets like some living river. Now those streets were empty, and it left him feeling very exposed. No bodies to shelter him from view, no noise to drown out the echoes in his head. Hell, there was only one person in his line of sight right now, one of those King gang members – _one person_! In Manhattan, that kind of solitude was reserved for rooftops and alleyways, and helicopters and muggers respectively tended to ruin them at random.

His musings took a backseat to his instincts when he caught movement; the King was walking. This would have been perfectly okay with Alex, but the walking was being done_ towards _him, versus myriad other perfectly reasonable directions the man could take that would not end with interaction. And from the way the King was glaring as he stalked towards the irritated monstrosity, he had something to say.

"Hey! Hey, you there!" he called, as if Alex Mercer wasn't the only other person in sight. "Don't move!"

Alex was very much considering doing just that, whether it be towards the man with a closed fist or away and onto the most stable rooftop he could find, but through gritty restraint, he kept himself still and tense as an unwound coil as the King approached.

"What do you want?" he ground out.

"Maybe you're new here. I haven't seen your face around before. So here's a friendly tip." The King's voice was anything but friendly. "We Kings rule Freeside. This is our turf, and we don't like it when people cause trouble."

_Shitshitshitshitshit. _"And what kind of trouble are we talking about?"

"A few days ago, some crazy nut went on a rampage or somethin'. Tore up the front gate completely – we had to put a bunch more guys out front to keep the animals out. Also knocked over a torch, caused a fire. Something gets broke around here, we're the only ones who get it fixed. So you can probably guess the Kings aren't too happy with this guy, yeah?"

"I heard about that." Alex tried to keep his voice neutral, but while he could pull a flawless act when he had specific memories telling him what to do, he wasn't much of a convincing liar on his own.

"Really? Because a little bird told me that that guy looked a lot like _you_."

He jabbed a finger at Mercer's face with the last word, and he had to restrain himself from lashing out and killing the man then and there.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah? _I_ think you do."

"He didn't," came a female – and familiar – voice.

The King turned; Alex whirled. If he hadn't been so engaged in the man he was arguing with, he probably would have heard two more sets of footsteps approaching. Only a little ways down the street was Cain, unmistakable in her long coat and hat. He blinked in surprise when he recognized the person behind her – he'd never seen Arcade Gannon outside of the Fort, save the first time they'd met. And Alex hadn't exactly been _seeing_ too well then.

She strode up to the King, and Alex took the opportunity to take a few steps back.

"Well, lady?" The unnamed King didn't look happy at the interruption. "I'm sure you've got something to back that up."

"Alex here is with me," she lied smoothly. "Funny-looking guy, I know – I can see why you might have pegged him. But we're travelling together; he just took a break to go to the Wrangler, you know how it is. Are you ready to get moving again, Alex?"

"Uh." Shit, was he supposed to say something here? "Yeah."

"Good, we'll get going then. Well, I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong guy."

The King squinted. "Hey, you're that gal who's been helping around here lately, is that right?" At Cain's affirmation, he continued. "All right. I'll take your word for it."

Alex watched in total bemusement as the gang member went off down the street, grumbling. "Dang, just when I thought I could wrap this up…"

_What the hell just happened?_

Cain watched him go. In the darkness, she (sensibly) no longer wore her sunglasses – her eyes were a dark bottle green. They were starkly outlined on her face – at dusk, it was hard to tell if it was some kind of eyeliner or just the product of sharp shadows.

At last, she turned to the hooded man and raised an eyebrow. The outlines stayed – definitely eyeliner, then. "I take it that wasn't a friend of yours?"

Whatever viral goop served as Alex's brain floundered. _Here._ The talky woman was _here_. That meant run, and _fast_, before she attempted to initiate a conversation. But she had also… not saved him, but done him a favor and averted a potentially messy situation, which meant he should be… grateful, or something. On the other hand, she was cunning enough to have an ulterior motive, so he shouldn't. Arcade was with her – had he somehow led Cain to him? For another interrogation? To force him to listen to her prattle on again? That could be a betrayal, which would end with him devouring their mangled corpses. But most important was the fact that Cain was within a thirty-foot radius from him and could start jabbering at _any time_. And his instinctive reaction to a prolonged conversation that did not involve weaponry, dismemberment, or useful information was the same reaction he had towards incoming artillery strikes – to get the hell away.

_Run? Fight? Run? Thank? Fight? Growl at? Run? Claw? Blade? Fight? Run? Fight? Talk?_

_Talk._

His jumbled mess of thoughts somehow managed to offer up a coherent sentence.

"Why did you do that?"

Cain grinned cheekily. "You looked like you needed an alibi."

Alex was nonplussed. "Uh… thanks?" It sounded more like a question than a statement. "And I am not funny-looking."

Cain shrugged. "You're wearing three layers in the desert. And honestly? I'm sorry, but I've met Super Mutants that put on a friendlier air than you. Crazy, schizophrenic Super Mutants."

Alex scowled.

"See? That is exactly what I'm talking about."

Alex scowled more.

"Wait, that was _you_ a few days ago?" Arcade stepped forward from his spot behind Cain, eyes wide with disbelief. "The gate was torn to _pieces!_"

"No," Alex said unconvincingly.

Cain clapped a hand on Alex's shoulder, ignoring the man's flinch. "Hey, what's life without a little mayhem? There was this one time back in New Reno…"

Alex ignored her, edging away from her arm. She pouted. "What are you even doing here, Arcade?"

Arcade startled at his voice. "Well, uh." He took a step backward, probably without meaning to – he clearly wasn't happy with having the conversation's focus turned on him. "Look, I, uh. You should probably know, I'm not going to be your doctor anymore. Not that you really seemed to need one, which was only a teensy bit suspicious for somebody I found half-dead in an alleyway." He was rambling, but Alex's eyes narrowed all the same. Why did he always run into the smart ones? Scrutiny was always a nasty thing, where he was concerned.

"But if you really have to, you can find another at the Followers. I already told Julie I was going and while she's not completely happy with it, she'll know what's going on and find you somebody else –"

"What is it?" Alex interrupted testily. Cain already talked enough for the two of them; Arcade didn't need to join in the party.

"I'm leaving Freeside. With Cain." Arcade's words were hurried and awkward, and they became increasingly defensive when Mercer didn't give a verbal reply and merely stared at him. "Damn it, don't look at me like that, I _had_ to try - okay, look, how do I explain this?" He gestured harshly, impatiently. "I've been in Freeside for ages. Long enough to see that nothing's changed. And I like to think I'm doing some good deeds here, but am I? Am I really? Research that goes nowhere, fixing lives that come back broken a week later – as fun as it is to dabble in self-delusion, my life has been going in circles for years. And I want to go somewhere else. Maybe this is the best I can do. But I'm going to see more and do more before I settle for it."

Alex just shrugged. He could understand that, although it still struck him as pretty unexpected. The doctor waited for a response a few seconds longer, sighing and slumping his shoulders when none came. "Look, I had to try," he muttered.

"What can I say? I get around. Never hurts to have an extra gun, either." Cain shrugged, then frowned slightly, looking to Alex. "Hey, about earlier. I didn't realize you had amnesia. I'm sorry for prying so hard."

Her voice was bright and utterly sincere. Alex didn't believe a word of it.

"How did you find that out?" he grated.

"Your doctor told me. It came up when we were chatting. Hey," she added defensively, "if you want to look unassuming and uninteresting, _don't_ run away when somebody's trying to talk to you. It raises questions. Personal experience speaking."

He shot Arcade a look. The doctor's return expression read something like 'If you don't want me to give your personal details out, don't pass me off to an information-seeking juice press'.

Well, if she had that much on him, he wanted the same leverage on her. "I know that you wanted to get out and do something else, Arcade," he said aloud. "But what exactly is she doing that you wanted in on?"

"Everything and everything, from what I gather," Arcade said dryly, at the same time Cain said "That is a _long_ story."

"Then give me the short version." _And please, no tangents,_ he prayed.

"You have no idea how many times I've had to recite this," she muttered, rummaging around in one of her coat pockets. She fished out a cigarette pack and lit it with the contents of one of her other pockets.

"Cigarette?" she offered. At Alex and Arcade's shake of the head, she shrugged and put the pack back into one of her bags. "Hey, I'm not gonna complain. More for me."

She took a long drag, blowing the smoke up at the sky. "All right. I told you that I'm a courier. I was not lying, and that has definitely been my occupation for the past five months. I take odd jobs across the Mojave. But I have to say, out of all of them, I wasn't expecting being a package carrier to end up being the most dangerous." She frowned. "Hell, it was a totally legit gig, too."

"Well, anyway, so I get this job to carry something to Vegas. Seemed strange to me – it looked like a casino chip, nothing that special – but the pay was good and I needed to stretch my legs anyway. Halfway there, I get ambushed by two Great Khan thugs and a guy in the most hideous atrocity of a suit I have ever seen in my life. Guy's name is Benny, I later found out. Head of one of the casinos in the Strip. He had me beaten, tied up, gave me some speech about having an 'eighteen-carat run of bad luck' while his goons dug my grave," her voice changed to a mocking imitation, "then drew a nine-millimeter pistol and shot me in the head twice."

She lifted her hat; in the darkness, the gesture would have been futile were he anyone else, but Alex could see the patch of shiny scar tissue along the side of her head where her red hair straggled around.

"But apparently he was wrong about the bad luck. That, or he's the worst shot in this side of the wasteland, because somehow he failed to kill a target who was bound, gagged, and lying prone on the ground two feet in front of him. I should have died, but somebody witnessed it and dug me up. It was apparently pretty touch-and-go for a few days, and there was a lot of Med-X involved, but the local doctor managed to get most the shrapnel out of my skull and put my brains back inside. So as soon as I could count my fingers and not get a number somewhere in the eighties, I set out to find this guy, settle the score, you know? And that's when my life got _really_ crazy."

"How do you count your fingers and get to _eighty_?" Arcade was incredulous.

"Hey, they just kept… _growing_, okay? You're a doctor, Arcade, you should know that enough Med-X and anyone will start tripping harder than a Freeside junkie. Uh, no offense."

He sighed. "Actually, no. They trip exactly as hard as Freeside junkies, given that they're on exactly the same stuff. Occasionally. But do go on."

Alex said nothing, but inwardly, he was surprised – and a little impressed. She didn't look that hardy to him. She'd survived a bullet to the head?

And vengeance, definitely the quest for vengeance. Now _that_ was something he could empathize with.

"So I've been chasing down this Benny guy all the way from Goodsprings. The long way," she clarified. "All kinds of crazy shit on the way, too, but I'll save those stories for later. I want to return those bullets of his. He's been a few steps ahead of me the whole way, but I've got reason to think he's stopped in the New Vegas Strip. And he's kept me waiting long enough," she added darkly.

"Problem is," she sighed, "is that the Strip, being the giant tourist trap it is, only checks in people that have enough money to keep it afloat. You need two thousand caps to get into the Strip, and I only have about seven hundred." Irritated, she rattled her pack. "So I'm stuck here trying to scrounge up the rest."

"Caps?" Alex interrupted in disbelief, as the rest his findings clicked into place. "You use _bottlecaps _as _currency?_"

"Well, yeah." Cain shrugged, as though using useless bits of litter as a system of value was something obvious. "What were you expecting?"

"Dollars?" he offered weakly, without thinking. He silently cursed himself for the slip even as the word left his mouth. Yet another link to things he'd rather keep under wraps. _Damn it all. Need to be more careful._

Now Arcade was giving him that suspicious stare again. Cain herself looked cheerfully unaffected, but knowing her, she'd probably had caught it too. "Well, they used to use those strips of paper before the Great War, but the total annihilation by fire of society _does_ tend to screw with those things." She fished a handful of the ridged discs out of a pouch on her belt and held them up for him to see. "So now we use these."

"They just seem so… worthless," he frowned, looking at the handful of caps.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "And little pieces of paper aren't?"

He shrugged. He personally had never had a use for money, but he identified green bills with value and bottlecaps with stuff people left on the streets. "Paper is lighter to carry around."

"Yeah, and it gets ruined a lot easier too. Burns easy, tears easy, getting wet just destroys it… I'd know, I'm a _courier_. I do letters as well as packages. There was this one time…" She scowled, putting the caps back. "Should have remembered what I was carrying, but I was so excited to see a lake that wasn't glowing green. The open desert is fucking _hot_, you know?"

She frowned contemplatively. "The swim might have been worth it, too, if it weren't for the lakelurks."

Alex, having no interest in getting wet or any idea what a lakelurk was, let the story pass over his head.

"So anyway, caps are a lot more durable. I've seen some of the old stuff. Some collectors will buy it, but it's pretty much worthless."

"Huh. Bottlecaps." He was going to have to get used to that one. "Anything else that looks like junk but isn't that I should know about?"

"Dinosaur toys," Cain said sagely. "Little plastic t-rexes. Grab every one you can find, they're worth their weight in gold bars if you can nab them."

Alex blinked. Hard.

"…Okay, what the _fuck_."

"Don't listen to her," Arcade sighed. "I'm pretty sure she's making that one up."

Cain pouted. "You're no fun!" She fished around in another one of her packs, lifting up a small plastic figurine of a cartoonish green tyrannosaur. "I have seen them before, though. Found this thing near Novac. His name is Teeny!"

Alex just stared.

"Anyway." She cleared her throat. "I don't suppose either of you know any work that needs doing? Because I'm running out of leads and I'm still thirteen hundred caps away from where I want to be, and quite honestly I'll take pretty much anything at this point."

"You've done everything big that needed to be done around the Fort," said Arcade. "There might be a few odd jobs from time to time, but nothing with that kind of money involved."

Alex merely shrugged. His strategy for making money, whenever he had a need for the stuff, was to find somebody with it and take it from their dead body. Preferably somebody he wouldn't lose sleep over killing. But he had a feeling that his strategies wouldn't go over too well, so he kept silent.

Cain didn't seem too heartened by this news. She frowned, taking a long drag from her cigarette. "There's nothing left to do here. The King said he _might_ have work for me tomorrow, but he didn't even pay me last time. _Jerk."_ She tapped her chin. "Guess I will have to leave Freeside," she sighed. "I didn't want to, but caps don't come from nowhere. I have a job in mind – there was a guy, some NCR researcher? He said something about there being a vault that had been doing some research on agriculture. Miracle work and all that. He was paying well for anyone that could go into the vault and get a copy of the data." She checked a bulky-looking device on her arm that he previously hadn't noticed. "The Pip-Boy says that Vault 22 isn't too far from here. A bit west, no more than a few hours' walk."

"A vault, huh?" Arcade looked thoughtful. "They'd be stocked with Pre-War supplies – far better tools and instruments than you can normally find. I'll be interested in seeing what kind of research they have."

"Well, that settles it, then." Cain cast a wistful look at the distant Strip before turning around. "Vault 22 it is," she declared. "Arcade?"

The blonde man nodded. "I'm ready to go when you are."

Alex looked up. He'd almost forgotten that Arcade was leaving with this woman. The notion was… uncomfortable to him. It had nothing to do with actual attachment, he reassured himself – he didn't _do_ friends. But Arcade was the only person in this world that he really _knew_ – him and _maybe_ Cain, now. With… _Dana gone_ – he had to force the words out mentally – suddenly, that felt a lot more severe. And now they were going to walk away.

He frowned. Should he…?

As if she could read his mind, Cain turned and grinned at him. "Are you just going to stand there all day or not?"

Alex started. Was she… _asking _him to come along? Teamwork was a new thing to him. Upon seeing him, most people tried to get the fuck away, not the opposite.

"That was an invitation, by the way," she hinted. "Always room for an extra gun."

Everything could go wrong. He didn't need companionship. He was strong enough to make his own way in the world. They offered him no meaningful support in a fight, whereas he could easily kill them by accident. Going along would provide numerous opportunities for his secrets to be laid bare, to drive Arcade and Cain away screaming and forcing him on the run again.

He made a snap decision. _Oh I am so going to regret this later_.

"Suppose I've got nothing better to do." He shrugged and turned to Arcade. "I was only hanging around the fort because you were there. If you're going to leave, I may as well follow you."

"Well, it's great to know you value my companionship so highly," Arcade quipped, "but as charming as you are, I'm really not into the whole stalker thing."

"I owe you for helping me back there," Alex said flatly. "Nothing more to it. I don't get attached."

"Woah, geez." The doctor held his hands up in surrender. "You've got your claws out today. I was just kidding. Christ."

Alex glanced down at his arms for a worried moment before remembering the figure of speech.

Cain watched their exchange, eyes glittering in the dark. "Well, glad that's settled!" she called cheerfully. She spun in place once before pointing up the north road, grabbed Arcade's arm, and marched up the street with the doctor in tow. "Onwards!"

Alex sighed and followed after her.

_What the hell have I gotten myself into?_

* * *

_[Alex has joined your party.]_

[Achievement Unlocked! **Make Some Friends!**(15pts)_-If you tilt your head and squint carefully enough, it kind of looks like you're capable of social interaction!]_


	9. Vault 22

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Arcade mused.

"Wow," was all Cain said.

Alex was inclined to agree. Having lived in a different era, he had actually seen healthy plants before, although they weren't exactly prevalent in the city. But the sight before him still drew his attention. It was literally a garden of paradise in the midst of a desert, like Central Park surrounded by Manhattan's concrete and glass.

It had been a few hours' walk from Freeside; dust, hills, rock, and windless heat, filled with Cain's chatter and Arcade's more reserved words. Alex had very little to say and while at first he quietly paid attention to their conversation, trying to pick up pieces of information about this post-apocalyptic world, but eventually the conversation turned to Cain's stories that mostly involved 'some guy I met once' and made extremely little sense with his lack of context, and he tuned them out.

They'd stopped about a third of the way there to rest for the night. Cain had been happy to show that she always carried extra bedrolls – a fact that had been accompanied by yet another of her increasingly improbable anecdotes – but taking the night watch was a good enough excuse to mask the fact that he didn't sleep.

When they had finally gotten on the move again, after what was possibly the longest night he'd ever spent, Alex was starting to question whether or not he'd made the right decision in tagging along. He was bored, he was moving at a horribly slow pace, and Cain had started pegging him with questions again. And then, halfway up yet another hill, the dry dirt underfoot had suddenly been threaded with little bits of soft green grass – a pale color, like the first buds of spring. The path wound around a large rock formation and once they passed that, it was in plain sight.

Alex's first impression came through memories that were not his own – pieces of stolen experiences brought forth to create a comparison to what he was seeing now. A rainforest exhibit at a zoo, a greenhouse, a tropical island honeymoon. That last thread of thought threatened to pull him in deeper, to show him the happy memories of one of his endless ghosts, and he had to force himself to stop and take a breath. The clearing was filled with a variety of flora that would have put any of New York City's carefully tended parks to shame, except this seemed to be thriving wholly on its own. Giant ferns rustled and shifted in the breeze, tall grasses shivered, and all manner of roots and vines snaked across the ground, dotted with little clusters of fat mushrooms. There were flowers, too, big purple ones and little white and yellow specks. It was like a stretch of ground had just forgotten it belonged to a hellish wasteland and decided to be something else.

The entrance to the vault was nestled inside a natural corner; steeply sloped terrain surrounded it on the other three sides. The cog-shaped door, half-open to reveal the overgrowth that continued inside, was mostly hidden by vines and strings of lush moss. A few trees framed it, dotted with those same spring-green leaves, branches hanging in front of the sandy-brown desert cliff directly behind them.

There was a sign a ways from the entrance; he could make out a few letters, a two, and what might have been some red graffiti. A sprawl of vines had crawled up around it and covered most of it, but he was pretty sure they didn't need it to know that they'd arrived at the place Cain was talking about, this Vault 22.

"That guy wasn't kidding," Cain murmured. Then she straightened up, voice louder. "Well, they're going to pay a hell of a lot for the secrets to this."

"What exactly are we supposed to bring back?" Arcade wondered. "We don't know how these plants are possible. They could be a particular species, or there might be some kind of process they underwent…"

"If this vault was an agricultural research center, there's going to be data logged in here somewhere. We – did anyone hear that?"

Alex had. A faint sort of scratching, scrabbling, barely audible over the swishing flowers…

From those flowers burst three massive mantises. They weren't quite the size of the wasps he'd encountered before, but they reached higher than his knees and that was way bigger than they should have been. And yet, for their size, he hadn't detected them earlier – they blended into the grass and flowers too well, yellow-green with some white tips on their tibias.

No, he _had_ seen them; the rustling of the ferns in the wind. Except there wasn't any wind. He frowned. Hell, he was getting sloppy.

He strode towards them, leaning forward to spring as his footsteps quickened into a run – then halted awkwardly. Damn it, he should have thought out this whole 'tagging along' thing as what essentially amounted to a bodyguard when his instinctive fighting style was a dead giveaway to his more sordid nature. A very dead giveaway.

Cain was already on the draw; she had two of the bugs down by the time Arcade had his plasma pistol out. She didn't bother with her rifle, sticking to her smaller pistol at this range. The last of the mantises got close enough for Alex to strike at with a simple kick; it crumpled immediately. That was a human enough thing to do, right?

Cain hummed a bit as she reloaded her pistol. "Hate those little things."

"Little? That's not the word I would have used," Alex commented incredulously.

"Then you haven't seen many mantises," Cain replied, pushing through a tangle of vines. "Come on."

Alex wanted to ask more, but caution stilled his tongue. Arcade already seemed to know something was off with him, and his refusing breakfast at the makeshift camp this morning had already aroused enough suspicion for the day. Cain was less… _pointed_ about it, but he was certain that she was watching him too.

The gap between the door and the wall was wide enough for the three of them to squeeze through, albeit one at a time. Cain went first; Alex took the rear, keeping an eye open for more mantises in the grass.

Ahead of him, Arcade paused, looking up at the ceiling. Alex followed his gaze – the ceiling was covered with creepers and orchids, despite the fact that they had to receive next to no sunlight at all.

"I'm no botanist," he frowned, "but I think this may not be entirely natural."

Alex had to agree. He was no wildlife expert – although he'd probably eaten a few if he took the time to look – but he _did_ have a lot of scientists bubbling in his head, and it was pretty elementary that the vast majority of plants needed light and soil to grow. The creepers and vines clinging to the ceiling had neither.

He took a look around. They seemed to be in some sort of control room – a lot of unfamiliar-looking machinery and long desks. Again, everything seemed covered with flora. There was a computer sitting on one of the maintenance desks; another one of those unfamiliar, bulky models. It was surrounded by a cluster of odds and ends – a hot plate, some canned food, a bag with a box of ammunition sticking out of the front. He wasn't necessarily interested, but Cain made a beeline straight for it.

She punched in a few keys; the screen lit up a middling green shade. She clearly had experience using these, navigating through screens and directories too fast for him to follow.

She finally stopped on a long block of text and began to read, occasionally mumbling the words aloud. "Temporary camp… several people have been in here before… These aren't from the vault's inhabitants. Somebody's been here before," Cain muttered. "'That fool Hildern'? Dammit, it's been at least two weeks since I talked to that guy. Could he have sent somebody else…" She contemplated it for a minute, then shook her head. "No. The timestamp is too old. And even if somebody's already retrieved the data for him, there's bound to be some good loot hidden down here. Speaking of…" She reached out and pocketed the snacks and ammunition lying on the desk.

"Finders keepers!" she protested, when Arcade gave her a look.

"I'm sure whoever left that here will agree with your philosophy when they get back," he said dryly.

"That's the thing about explorers in the wasteland," Cain remarked. "They tend to leave things around that they never get to come back for."

"Wow," Arcade said. "That was not even the least bit subtle. You… _do_ realize that you could rightly be called an explorer yourself?"

"Meh. No risk, no gain." She waved him off. "Come on. We've got some data to find."

And so in they went.

0o0o0

Cain pushed a string of vines that dangled from the ceiling out of her way, briefly noting how out-of-place they looked against such a manmade environment.

But on the other hand, after all the abandoned places she'd trekked through – some recently – it wasn't all that weird. This was hardly the first pre-War ruin she'd been inside, and a couple out-of-place plants and a funny smell were pretty nondescript compared to some of the places she'd been through - a Repconn facility with a cult of ghouls and a gunfight on the ruins of a roller coaster came to mind. And after crawling through a pitch-dark basement, knowing there were paranoid invisible super mutants meandering around and jumping _every damn time_ Boone brushed against her from behind, she could hardly even feel unsettled.

That wasn't to say she wasn't _alert _– she had her eyes open for any sort of critter that might be hiding amongst the foliage. But it was going to take more than some musty old Vault to send her running. Even if the Vault in question was pretty damn musty.

Arcade wasn't as comfortable with it, and it showed. He moved slowly and stopped often to look around; he ended up having to run to catch up several times. There was one point when an automatic door slid shut behind him; she could have sworn the man jumped at least a foot into the air. It was a stark contrast to her brief stint travelling with Boone, who had moved like a shadow and reacted to every situation with cool, almost frighteningly detached experience.

Alex was closer to Boone, in that regard. His step was heavier and his attention more easily diverted than the sniper's, but that intense focus was the same. The man's eyes were constantly darting from side to side, pausing only to stare deadpan at her when he caught her watching him. He was very alert, but while Arcade's was the jumpy, nervous sort of alertness that leaned a lot closer to the flight end of the fight-or-flight spectrum, Alex's was the kind of alertness that whirled around and smashed whatever startled him, then casually turned around and kept on walking.

That had happened a few minutes ago. There were still some mantis guts on his hand. Eww.

She thought back to their initial meeting, yesterday. It wouldn't be much of a challenge if she pieced everything together within a span of a day, but she couldn't help but wonder. He had been sufficiently weird to stick out, especially in the Fort – too cold to be a doctor, too fierce to be a patient. And her interest had been piqued because he was _so close_ to normal, but didn't quite get there. For some reason, that made him stand out all the more.

Cain had been to a lot of places, even before this whole misconstrued revenge trip. And she'd seen all sorts of people as a result. It wasn't so much _strangeness_ that she was drawn to – although _she_ seemed to draw _it_ – as it was a good mystery. People like Beatrix the ghoul, they wore their freak flag out in the open. Unorthodox, maybe, but they didn't pretend to be anything else.

But Alex… Alex wasn't a ghoul cowboy dominatrix, and yet there was definitely something off with him. He just didn't fit. Cain had seen all kinds of people in her travels, but she was hard-pressed to remember anyone who looked quite so normal and yet out-of-place.

She frowned slightly as she idly went over what she knew, not for the first time. Arcade had said he'd been sick, and recently, too, but Alex did not look the part – if anything, he appeared healthier than the average wastelander. His clothes were intact and clean, if not a bit rugged. He was sturdily built; not obscenely muscled, but he didn't have the scrawny, lean sort of look most people tended towards. His complexion was clear and he had no visible scars, but he was so _obviously_ a fighter – what was up with that? Among her comparisons that she'd drawn against Boone, she'd wondered if Alex was an ex-military, but that didn't fit, either. What kind of soldier hadn't heard of the Legion? And he was too jumpy, too… feral, for it. It was obvious Alex didn't like being approached; she couldn't picture the man in a squad. Amnesia or not, there was none of that conditioning.

If she could be sure of anything, though, it was that he struck her as the type of person that was trying to hide something. And the only thing Cain liked more than a mystery was solving one.

She watched as he paused briefly, tilting his head up just a shade and sniffing the air. Little things like that – things that _could_ be human, _could_ be written off, but when put together seemed to paint a different picture entirely. One she couldn't quite make out.

"I don't like this place," he said – if_ saying_ accurately covered the way his voice crunched and rolled like small stones underfoot. "It's too green, it's… _wrong._"

Normally, she'd be right on that, teasing him about being afraid of a few plants… but really, looking around at the moldy corridors, the air that seemed just a little too _thick_, she felt it too.

And she hadn't survived this long without a good intuition.

"Something's wrong here," she agreed. "We're not going back, but keep your eyes open. Opener. Really open."

"Abundans cautela non nocet," Arcade muttered.

"Words to live by," Alex said dryly.

Arcade stumbled in surprise, and the sudden disruptive sound caused the other two to freeze. "You understand Latin?"

The hooded man shrugged. "I've picked some of it up over time."

"Does the word 'Legion' mean anything to you?" the doctor asked cautiously.

"If anything I've heard about them is true, then yes. It means a bunch of assholes I plan on killing."

"Hey, I know some Latin too." Arcade still looked wary, so Cain came to Mercer's rescue. "Give the guy a break, it's not like Caesar owns the language. Outside of his own head, anyway."

"…Pardon me," the doctor eventually said. "You rarely see anyone that knows it these days, besides…" He trailed off.

"And where did you pick it up?" she sent back at him.

"Touché." He rolled his eyes.

It was easy to forget that Arcade was definitely hiding something too, when compared to Alex. Alex wore his obvious _wrongness_ as boldly as the clothes he wore. There was something a little off in everything he did; the way he moved, the way he talked, the way those eyes always _burned_. Arcade's was subtler, a better act, but it was a lot easier to find where the cracks were.

And strangely enough, that made them equally difficult to pick apart – _for now,_ she mentally added, watching Alex walk with that measured, stalking gait of his. Arcade dodged questions he didn't like; that much was obvious. It was a smooth conversational trick at first, something that could have been passed off as self-deprecation, but now she knew he wore his sarcasm like a mask; it was easy to pick out subjects he disliked, and narrow down where to pry. Alex was the more obvious case, but when it came to the wheedling part, all of his answers where the same – short, clipped, concise, words bit and snapped off in unnatural places. It was hard to tell what made him uncomfortable because the entire act of being _spoken_ to seemed to make him uncomfortable.

Well, that was his problem. "Hey, Alex," she called.

"Yeah?" came the gravelly reply.

"I noticed that back at the Vault's entrance, you didn't have a weapon when those mantises showed up. I can get you one. You know, since I've been killing assholes a lot lately, and dead assholes don't need their weapons. Anything you prefer?"

He shuffled. "I don't use weapons. Not usually."

"What? Like hand-to-hand fighting?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Huh. Not sure how well that would work out. I mean, if bringing a knife to a gunfight is a bad idea, bringing your fists to a gunfight is, like… a really bad idea. But hey, whatever works for you."

He only grunted in response. Cain frowned, committing that inequality to Alex's growing pile of things that didn't add up. If he was an unarmed fighter… how did he plan to kill an entire army with his bare hands?

0o0o0

Alex grimaced as his two new companions started down the stairwell ahead.

It wasn't that he was _afraid_, per se – Alex didn't really _do_ afraid, not where his own wellbeing was concerned. He'd gotten past that stage once he realized that being _hurt_ never really led to being _killed_. But that didn't mean he had to like the fact that the place plumbed deeper than he'd initially thought, or the connotations that this probably wasn't the only set of stairs he'd find here, each one taking him further away from freedom.

The thought of being underground spurred the same sort of primal nervousness that he'd relate with rainstorms or being penned in. Really, that was the root of it – he didn't like being penned in. Under an open sky, any route or course of action was available to him; any means of _escape_. Here, he was confined to exactly the same space as any potential enemy was. Nowhere to jump, nowhere to build up speed.

He was still confident he could kill anything without those advantages – and it wasn't like he could have used them in front of Cain or Arcade anyway. It was just one of those irrational aversions, something he understood but still didn't want to have to deal with. With a mental sigh, he started down after them, feet clacking on the steps as he descended further into the vault.

That musty, cloying smell was stronger here, as if whatever pall had settled in this place was denser as they went down. From Arcade and Cain's wrinkled noses, he wasn't the only one to have noticed it.

They found an elevator by the stairs – to Cain and Arcade's disappointment and Alex's private relief, they couldn't get the door open. He was not fond of elevators. Tight, enclosed spaces aside, they carried a fair bit of baggage in his mind, and he was not eager to step onto one again.

There was also another set of stairs, but in the interest of not accidentally overlooking anything, Cain wanted to search the floor thoroughly before moving on. Alex was perfectly happy to stay closer to the surface as long as possible, and Arcade seemed to share the same sentiment.

While the first floor had been a fairly straightforward series of corridors, the second level was more convoluted; not so much linked together by halls as it was by rooms. A room marked 'Lab' led to a small atrium, half-choked with what looked like some sort of twisted tree. Luckily, the numerous connecting branches weren't blocked off. There was a considerable amount of backtracking, stumbling in and out of little dead-end rooms, often filled with potted plants and numerous light fixtures. Arcade pointed out that they looked like research stations, something that surprised no one.

However, there was nothing that promising to be found. A lot of empty vials, broken petri dishes, and rusty equipment – not the sort of thing Cain was looking to bring back. As for data, all of the RobCo terminals they found were defunct. There was one that she'd managed to power up after a bit of prodding and battery-rigging, but to her frustration, there had been nothing logged on it. She had proceeded to shove the butt of her rifle through the screen, then left the room whistling a jaunty tune.

The foliage was thicker here – spongy lichens and tall grasses sprouted from patches of dirt, and mushrooms thrived underneath desks. Despite the area being a laboratory, they didn't uncover anything of interest.

At least, not in the venue of research or data. They did stumble upon an old and battered vending machine – one that Alex was fully prepared to pass by as just another relic of this broken-down, overgrown tomb. Cain, on the other hand, seemed very enthused – something he was already learning to take in stride.

"Oooh!" Immediately, she went to picking the vending machine's locks and gathering the bottles inside. "Nuka-Cola!"

"Nuka-Cola?" Alex echoed. "What, like Coke?" The curved glass bottle Cain clutched tugged at some of his older memories, of things even before his time.

Arcade sighed. "I have no idea what 'Coke' is, but Nuka-Cola is, in this case, a two-hundred-year-old and undoubtedly lukewarm beverage. Quite popular before the war."

"And it's still good!" Cain chirped.

The doctor gave her a dry look. "Yes, and I can't understand why anyone would want to drink it. Everything's irradiated enough without having isotopes added to it as preparation."

"Wait, wait," Alex interrupted as the pieces clicked. "_Nuka-_Cola? As in, nuclear? They sold radioactive beverages? Are you _serious_?"

He barely managed to bite his tongue before he said anything more revealing. Humanity had always been beyond his ability to fathom, but… seriously? _Seriously?_ Were they _trying_ to kill themselves? Apparently, they'd succeeded in the end, but…

"Um, only a little bit," Cain said. "It's not that much more irradiated than everything else we eat. And it's refreshing!"

The virus gave her a flat stare for about ten seconds before turning away and pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "I give up."

"What?" she protested. "It's just a beverage!"

He just shook his head, contemplating the extinction of common sense as she popped the cap and happily guzzled whatever-the-fuck-somebody-had-decided-was-a-good- marketing-idea.

Another five or so minutes passed in quiet, uneventful searching. But with nothing but silence to occupy his attention, a couple rusty gears in Alex's brain began to turn, and he frowned. Underneath the plants and grime, this place… as he looked around, he felt the stirrings of a headache. The metal doors and halls, the strange architectural style; it looked similar to the place he'd first woken up. The layout was different, maybe, but the build was the same –

A sharp stab of pain struck his temples, and pressure quickly mounted in his skull. He groaned, clapping a hand to his forehead as he recognized the old, unwelcome feeling of a flashback – of lost memories returning in a series of firing neurons and snapping connections –

Images. A Vault. Walls, corridors, sliding metal doors and dormitories not unlike the ones he'd seen on the floor above. But these ones were blurrier, seen through duller senses, and the place danced with the shadows of activity. An arena, watching some kind of sports event from the stands – it was quickly swept away by a meal in a crowded cafeteria, which in turn gave way to working on some sort of complicated machinery. Then he was left grasping at a few disjointed images that flashed by so quickly he could scarcely process them. He thought he saw a woman's face –

"Are you all right?"

That was Cain, bringing him back to earth. He shook his head and blinked rapidly, trying to clear off the trailing memories. A Vault, like this, but alive… and oddly familiar. Wherever those memories had come from, he had the strangest feeling that he had seen that place; not somewhere like it, but that same place. And with his own eyes, not some stranger's…

"I'm fine," he grit out. "Just a headache."

"I hear you," Cain said. "The air here could make anyone sick."

It was just an expression, but Alex frowned. There was _definitely_ something he tasted in the air, something more than just little particles of plant matter – something that tugged at his skin and had his biomass rippling just under the surface.

Too much mystery, too few answers. He just wished they could find what they were looking for and get the hell out of here.

Eventually, Cain conceded defeat for the floor, and they looped back to the stairwell and headed down to the third sublevel. Alex was none too thrilled.

Even the stairs were covered in green – moss and mold, with a couple ferns growing here and there. Cain and Arcade had to pick their way down carefully to avoid slipping on the organic film that seemed to have settled on everything.

The staircase ran parallel to yet another hall. Alex, who'd ended up at the front, glanced down both ways. More stairs on one end, a turn in the corridor down the other. He couldn't see anything moving, but… hell, this place was getting to him. What was making him feel so damn uneasy? This wasn't just being below ground - his skin was literally _crawling..._

He lagged behind as the others passed him again, trailing after them uncertainly. He could have sworn he heard the faintest scratching sound…

"Did you hear that?" he asked in low voice.

At the sudden question, both Cain and Arcade stopped; the former in the middle of the hallway and the latter in one of the increasingly frequent patches of grass and flowers on the ground. "Hear what?" the doctor asked, glancing nervously from side to side.

Alex frowned, head tilted slightly as he listed for a few seconds. The vault was silent but for his companions' breathing and the grinding hum of distant machinery.

"Never mind," he began grudgingly, frustrated. He'd been certain he'd heard something.

Arcade shrugged. "Fine, fine. Just remember that a guy _might_ be nervous enough down here without any of those charming false alarms." He lifted his foot –

Something in the grass rose up –

And Alex sprang. Instinct reacted far faster than his brain ever could; he leapt forward, slamming his fist through the _thing_ that shivered in the grass. It came back covered in mold and slime as he pulled back for a second strike. The creature made no sound at having a hole driven through it, although it did display enough awareness to stumble backwards, pulling away from him. And as it scurried back, he caught a glimpse of a face – a face that made his biomass lurch. It was not the 'face' of a plant, or one of the myriad mutant creatures that apparently populated the wasteland. There were no real features, only dips and curves and contours of plant matter that created impressions of them, but none the less, it was a weirdly human face. Human in the blurry way that the Infected had been still almost recognizable after the disease had melted their faces like wax –

He punched it again. And again. And again and again and again. He beat it back to the ground, broke the visage that stirred burning memories and old ghosts from his past until it was nothing more than a green smear against the dirt and crushed grass.

He couldn't get that image out of his head. It was the wrong color and maybe not quite the right shape, but… furiously, he shucked the slimy coating off his forearms and fingers, only standing up once he was clean.

"What the hell was that?" he growled as he turned around and stood.

Alex cringed at the looks he was getting from his companions. Cain looked taken aback; Arcade looked like he'd seen a ghost. He hadn't pulled out the claws, but from the looks of things, he hadn't really done much better.

"Wow, Alex. Um. Okay. That was…" Cain struggled for a word. "Savage."

This was not a line of questioning he wanted to get into. "Instinct," he said shortly, which wasn't totally lying.

"So when you get surprised by something, it's instinct for you to get down on your knees and splatter it into the wall?" Arcade tittered, a touch hysterically. "Good to know!"

"It was going to attack you!" Alex growled, frustrated.

"Yeah, and what the heck did you do to it? Your fist went right _through _it!"

"Weren't you paying attention? It was a _plant_… thing! Not much resistance!" It had been pretty spongy, actually. He frowned. "What _was_ that thing, anyway?"

Arcade hesitated, looking like he wanted to press the point, then shrugged. "I don't know. Never heard of anything like that before. Cain gets out a lot more often than I do, though." He glanced at the aforementioned woman. "Anything?"

She shook her head. "I've had lots of exciting things try to eat me during my time, but this is new."

"Huh." Alex knelt down, carefully inspecting a handful of the spongy remains. His biomass tingled on contact, feeling oddly disquieted and even a bit aggressive – whatever it was, there was something off about the material. He'd reacted similarly to diseased material in his time, from Redlight's monsters to one time Dana – his throat clenched – had come down with the flu. But this stuff… even though it had looked human in shape, there was nothing for a disease to _infect_. No skin, no muscle, no organs – not a trace of blood throughout the entire mess.

He chose to voice this aloud; if nothing else, it might pull the conversation closer to the monster itself and away from his reaction to it. "This thing… whatever it was, it looked like a person. But I'm not seeing anything here except moss."

"Hold on." Arcade fished a pair of surgical gloves out of his bag and set to poking around the plant-creature's remains.

"You know, you didn't really leave a lot for inspection," he said archly, looking up a short while later.

Alex shrugged. "Wasn't intending to."

Arcade sighed. "That being so… you're right. I'm not seeing any trace of… well, _flesh_, in this mess. It's all just some sort of plant matter. Looks fairly average to me, although I'll be the first to admit botany's not my area of expertise. Are you sure it wasn't just some matter of carnivorous plant?"

"I didn't say that. I just said that for a bunch of moss, it looked a hell of a lot like a person."

"I'm surprised you got such a good look at it," Cain mentioned shrewdly.

Alex grunted. "Like I said, instincts. Thing was about to pounce. I know that pose."

"Yeah, we figured that one out," the woman pointed out. It was starting to frustrate him. Should he have just stood there and not done anything, for the sake of a good act? He hadn't come all this way to lose his only connection in this world to an unsettlingly humanoid lump of overgrowth.

"Just keep your eyes open," he said. "I don't like this."

"Don't need to tell me twice," Cain agreed. "Hey, there's that elevator again. Wonder if we can get it open?"

The answer, revealed a minute later, was decidedly 'no'.

"Damn," she sighed. "All right, you know the drill. We're scouring every inch of this floor before we go down to the next. Pay attention – we're not alone down here."

Alex stared at her. "Yeah, I _got_ that," he said flatly.

"Shut up and let me feel important."

They continued down the hall, considerably more cautious this time. Knowing that there were possible foes around put Alex on edge, turning his edginess to outright paranoia where any flickers of sound or sight were concerned.

They peered into a few rooms, guns first, but found little save for more plants (of the non-mobile variety). Those patches of dirt and ferns that stretched across the ground were given considerably more examination before anyone dared cross them, but they managed to make it through the end of the hall with only one more plant-creature rearing its green head.

This led to a larger room than the smaller areas that had branched out from the hall. It looked to be a sort of greenhouse; large and deliberate-looking mounds of plants grew in several fenced enclosings. The rafters above them hung low and were unsurprisingly looped by creepers and orchids. Alex glanced at them uneasily from time to time as they made their way in, not sure how steady the supports were.

"This may not be the safest place to be around, if you catch my drift," Arcade noted. "Big, aggressive plant creatures. Greenhouse. If you see where this is going, well."

Cain responded by taking a shot with her rifle. The doctor jumped before realizing where she'd aimed – ahead into one of the fenced areas, where a green form struggled and then slumped.

"I've got this," she said.

"Don't get cocky," Alex warned, his low, rough voice cutting a stark contrast from her clear and energetic one. "Stay alert."

Cain snorted. "Why is it that I can _never_ find any travelling companion that has the vaguest sense of optimism?"

Arcade coughed. "My guess is that all of them met a messy end rather early on in their careers."

"What does that make me, then?" Alex could hear the pout in Cain's words without even turning to look at her.

"Well, if I had to sum it all up in one word? Loud."

The red-haired woman sighed. "I am surrounded by wet blankets."

"I am not a wet blanket!"

"Arcade, on the scale of wet-blanketness, you're so soggy I could use you as a water supply for several months by wringing you out. Except I wouldn't, because that would be really, really disgusting. Where am I even going with this, anyway?"

Alex exhaled and rolled his eyes as they carried on, treading carefully through the occasional patches of grass and swinging their heads from side to side. He wasn't sure if he was annoyed or amused with the fact that Cain never seemed to want to shut up, but as long as Arcade was there to carry the brunt of conversing, it wasn't _quite_ so bad as he'd expected. Still, he wished that they'd be more attentive in what was clearly enemy territory.

His eyes latched onto a sudden movement – up ahead, another human-shaped mound of green shifted in a patch of grass. He stalked towards it, barely containing the claws that itched to spring from his hands. He lifted one arm –

"_Maybe… you'll think of me …_"

Was that… _singing?_

Yes, he confirmed a second later with a quick look behind him. Cain was singing some soft tune to herself as she took aim at the creature.

"_When you are all alone…"_

Curious exasperation struggled with and overthrew focus. "What are you doing that for?" he demanded tersely.

Then he got a plant-thing-claw to the face, which proved even more distracting than the singing. He took the overgrown blob of lichen out with a well-placed uppercut, narrowly missing the well-placed bullet which cut through the creature's remains shortly thereafter.

Cain pouted. "You're making me waste my shots."

"Ergh." He spat out a mouthful of green. "Got something stuck in your head?"

"It's a habit." She shrugged.

"That's not exactly a good habit for a sniper to have."

She grinned blithely back. "That's exactly what Boone said."

"Boone?" Alex frowned.

"Another guy I've met on my travels." She tilted her head. "I'm still trying to figure out which one of you is the worst conversationalist I've ever met. I think he's still winning, so no worries."

Alex snorted and rolled his eyes –

-and just so happened to catch a glimpse of the creeping plant-monster on the beam overhead, as it pounced over the edge –

He didn't think, he _acted._ Pure instinct lashed out; in one fluid, rippling motion, his fingers were razor claws and his arms were twisted with chitinous spikes. He leapt and met the creature's would-be-ambush in midair, rending it in two with one furious slash. He landed a short distance from Arcade and Cain, half-kneeling and talons at the ready. The wet squish of falling moss came a second later as the remains thudded to the ground behind him.

Then there was a sharp exhale. His eyes flicked to its source; two pairs of incredulous eyes, currently fixed on him.

Oh.

_Shit_.

* * *

Abundans cautela non nocet – One can never be too careful.


	10. The Depths

_Oh, shit_.

Those two words were the first thing to come across Alex's mind at that moment, as he saw Cain and Arcade staring at him with that familiar mix of incredulity and fear and realized that he was practically naked before them, his monstrous claws out for all to see. They were also his second thought, third thought, and all continual thoughts for a decent while, and even when his brain managed to move past that milestone, he saw no reason to revise that initial opinion.

When he fought, he tended to move without thinking – it was the easiest and often most efficient way to do things. Fighting was ultimately instinctive. Every inch of his shifting biomass and coiled muscles knew how to react without any input from conscious thought. In fact, that tended to have an adverse effect on his performance if he wasn't fighting a foe that really required him to think.

The problem was, his instincts never really compensated for the more… _social..._ adverse effects of his actions. Their job was to make things dead and keep his body alive; he had no built-in reason to care if civilians around him were flailing around like headless hydras or if his sister was staring at him in slack-jawed horror.

Except he _did_ care, whether it be from the inconvenience of having to flee and hide out from a Blackwatch patrol for a few minutes, or the clawing guilt that inevitably followed those few awful times where he had truly managed to terrify his sister with his monstrousness. It had not taken long for him to learn that society and its expectations did not cater to him in the slightest – from humanity's viewpoint, his methods of action were 'violent' and 'brutish'. From his viewpoint, life was just annoyingly complex.

And of course, while his instincts had no qualms about bringing out his claws to most effectively neutralize a threat, the action tended to be detrimental toward his social prospects where his two watching and _naïve_ allies were concerned.

As his sister once would have put it… _nice fucking_ job,_ Alex._

The way he would have phrased it involved a lot more expletives, cursing, and tearing things apart. He only managed to refrain from the last bit through some vain 'who-am-I-kidding' hope that the situation could still be salvaged.

"Shit, shit, _shit_."

"Oh god," Cain uttered, eyes wide as dinner plates. Beside her, Arcade was holding his weird glowy gun level with him and looked twitchy enough to use it. Alex tensed, bracing himself for the inevitable fallout.

"That," Cain began slowly, "was possibly the coolest thing I've witnessed this month. And you're going up against glow-in-the-dark ghouls and invisible eight-foot-tall blue super mutants right now, so fuck if that's not an accomplishment. I mean, seriously, he had a cult and everything. The ghoul, I mean, not the super mutants. Wait, no, they had a cult too, I think. Guy was taking orders from a Brahmin skull. And people call _me_ crazy."

Alex's defensive scowl melted into a slightly less defensive and more confused scowl. "Wait, what?"

"Dude, you could have told me you were a mutant, I totally don't judge. Were you vat-dipped? Oooh! Can you go invisible? Breathe fire? Glow in the dark? I've never seen those claws before and now your arms are all wiggly and _how do you do that?_ Does it feel weird? Is that how you usually look or are you just hiding-"

Alex was beginning to wonder if Cain was as intelligent as he was giving her credit for, or if she was just absolutely insane. Okay, so maybe she wasn't doing the 'pointing, screaming, running' routine he was used to, but he was starting to prefer that to the stream of incomprehensible questions he was getting in lieu of a rational response.

"I don't want to talk about this," he ground out, cutting her off. "_Later. _When we're not in the middle of some infested underground base, then _maybe_."

"Oh no no _no_ we are talking about this right now." Arcade's voice was about half an octave higher than it normally was, and Alex didn't need a predator's senses to catch his rapid breathing. "Generally, when people start mutating horribly in front of each other, it's expected that they have the common decency to explain what particular pit of irradiated waste they fell into before they eat the other guy. Of course, I'd be a lot happier without the eating thing, but the explaining thing sounds particularly appealing right now –"

Alex briefly considered pointing out that if he was going to eat them, he would have done so already - or that he wasn't particularly hungry right now - but that didn't seem like it was going to salvage the situation much. His preferred diet always tended to go over like a house on fire… but did he even have to share that? They had only seen that he could transform himself, his arms specifically – he could do damage control here.

The doctor's babbling trailed off as Cain waved him off and stepped forward, a clear act of taking charge. Alex eyed her warily.

"Fine, we can do this _later_." Arcade started to protest, but she waved her hand at him again. "And it's going to be a nice, long discussion, with no nasty plant monsters jumping in to interrupt us. _Won't it_, Alex?" she finished sweetly.

Alex's lips drew back into a snarl. He didn't owe her anything – what right did she have to demand information from him? If she had any idea what she was dealing with - oh, no sane person would try to lord anything over _him_. "As much as I feel like spilling my whole sordid past to whoever the hell I come across," he growled. "You'll have to forgive me for wanting to leave it alone."

"People sometimes get a bit interested when their travelling companions start showing signs of superhuman powers." Cain's words sounded light, but there was a touch of steel behind them. "You'll_ have to_ _forgive me_ for wanting to know what hand of cards I've been dealt."

Alex growled, a long and low sound. Cain, for her part, didn't flinch; just stared back at her most recent companion and his shiny new claws. It wasn't just those claws, she noted; both of his arms were covered in spiky black things. They weren't even enough to be tubes or wiring, but they were too… _organic_ to be some kind of rock. Maybe it was some kind of shell? But the claws themselves looked very metallic, as if Alex had just replaced his fingers with straight razors.

"Fine," he finally sighed, the sound thick with frustration. "Fine. But we're doing this my way."

"As long as your way involves answering every single question I can put together between now and when we get out of here, sure, I'm game."

He glared at her. "Don't push your luck."

"Oh, it always does most of the pushing for me," she said blithely.

There was no use in arguing, Alex decided. His arms rippled, and in a smooth, melting motion, the twisted black spikes and protrusions sank back into his coat. The redheaded woman watched with obvious interest, while Arcade's expression twisted into an almost comical mixture of fear and confusion.

"So," Cain started, "are we just going to stand around here all day, or can we get a move on so I can get paid and uncover every secret you're hiding? Not particularly in that order."

A growl rumbled in the base of Alex's throat.

"Are we seriously just going to go with this?" Arcade finally said. At Cain's raised eyebrow, he frowned. "I mean, does this happen a lot?"

Cain grinned. "Dude, you have no idea."

"I am seriously rethinking my decision to follow you around."

"If I remember right, you wanted to see the world."

"If this is what the world is actually like," the doctor sighed, "then I'm quite content hiding in my own little microcosm and pretending that none of this ever happened, yes."

Alex stuffed his hands in his pockets and glared at the floor. He had time to work with this, to divvy up what he could afford to tell and what he could keep under wraps. He was working with the truth here, and that made things easier. He just needed to see how good he was at telling half the story and making it sound like the whole thing.

Then again, with a story as twisted as his own, he wasn't sure that even the unadulterated truth would make enough sense.

Arcade was keeping his distance, he could tell – and he really didn't have a problem with that, either. But he could feel Cain's eyes drilling into the back of his head, and it was agitating enough to make him purposely fall back to the rear of the group again.

They travelled through a series of corridors and rooms without incident, taking care not to step in any of the overgrown spots. The plant-creatures didn't stir unless they got too close, and that allowed Cain and Arcade to take the time to scope out and land good shots on them from afar. Alex kept watch on the less obvious areas. Unfortunately, his heat vision wasn't proving particularly useful, and he quickly gave up on that. Getting caught with glowing yellow eyes would just be another thing for him to explain, and just the thought of the upcoming interrogation was tiring enough.

They passed into a larger room, this one dark save for a black light that illuminated a corner full of plants. There wasn't anything hiding in it, but Arcade found an intact terminal that Cain quickly powered up.

"Whoever was here before managed to come this far," she noted, green eyes bright in the screen's light. "And from the looks of this, they found out the same things we did. Oh, and this is interesting."

"I've taken the proper precautions," she read aloud, "but the lichen doesn't seem to be contagious, at least to ghouls. Looks like our former explorer was a ghoul. Huh. Hildern didn't really seem the type."

"Contagious? Why would lichen be contagious?" Arcade frowned.

"Ghouls?" Alex asked, at exactly the same time.

Cain chose to answer the latter question. "You need to get out more," she laughed. "Ghouls. You know, people that spent one too many nights warming their hands over the irradiated glow of an old warhead. Not too common – usually the radiation will just kill you – but the lucky ones walk out of it. You'll know 'em when you see 'em. Some of them are nice, some of them will try to eat you. Not too different from a lot of the people out there, I guess." She shrugged. "Try not to stare, though, they tend not to like it."

Alex decided to keep that in mind. Extra-irradiated people would probably not be a good thing to consume if he valued his continued health. Although 'you'll know them when you see them' was pretty unhelpful as descriptions went...

Cain was reading the terminal again. "Apparently, there's a backup of data in the lowest sublevel. That's probably what we're looking for."

"How many levels are there?" Arcade asked.

"I have no idea!"

"Well, that makes me feel confident," Arcade muttered.

A couple hallways and lurking plant-things later, the group found themselves back at the stairs. Halfway down to the next sublevel, they were surprised by another plant creature lying dormant around the bend. Alex was the quickest to deal with it, grabbing it by the chest and ripping it in two. He didn't use his claws, but for the looks on his companions' faces, he might as well have.

However, any questions he might have had to fight off were quickly trumped by a more pressing concern. "Oh, this is just bullshit," Cain swore. The next flight of stairs to the fifth floor had caved in; a mixture of clutter and debris from the collapsed ceiling left it impassable. Right next to the blocked staircase was that damned elevator again, extremely useful in this situation and currently shut tight.

"Does this mean we came down here for nothing?" Arcade wondered.

Cain shook her head. "There has to be another way down," she said. "There always is." After a moment of thought, she glared at the elevator. "If there were some way to get this open, we could go straight to the bottom. But it looks like it's in lockdown. Why would you even shut down an elevator? Were they trying to prevent people from getting out?"

"Don't know." Alex spoke up, voice rough. "I could try and clear the stairs, but it's not stable. Without that stuff to prop it up, the rest of the ceiling might collapse in. It's an option, but I'd rather look for another way down first."

Arcade raised an eyebrow. "You do realize some of those pieces might weigh close to half a ton, right? Or shall I just add superhuman strength to the list of things you conveniently forgot to mention when you introduced yourself?

Alex growled. "Look, you've fucking got me, okay? When I said I'd talk later, I meant later. Let's just keep moving."

Cain eyed him for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, that's a good plan. Things tend to try and brain me whenever they get the chance, so I'm a little unenthusiastic about trying to get down those stairs unless we absolutely have to. Come on, let's go this way."

'This way' led them into an abandoned cafeteria; the upper level of a two-floor area. A walkway wound around a cocktail bar, an entertainment lounge, and a cinema; below them stretched what might have once been a recreational garden before the vault became an overgrown hellscape.

The cafeteria itself was located on end of the walkway, on the other side of the room. It was also, incidentally, filled with mantises. Cain and Arcade made short work of those without needing his intervention; he wasn't too enthused about getting in the crossfire anyway. Cain's weapons wouldn't do much to him, but he didn't trust anything glowy and green, and Arcade's weapon was glowy and green and spat glowy green projectiles. He was not particularly eager to see what those would do to him.

The dining area was a mess – a century or two of being inhabited with nothing but giant bugs would probably do that to a place, Alex reflected. Booths were torn and tables overturned, bottles were strewn about the ground, and everything was coated with a fine veneer of dust. He watched with a raised eyebrow as Cain found an old refrigerator and began stocking up on its contents.

"Are you sure that's safe to eat?" he ventured, watching her try to cram a few packages of 'Fancy Lad Snack Cakes' into a bag that really did not have enough room for them.

"I have no idea how they package this stuff," she answered, "but it's pretty good if you stop to think that it's two hundred years old."

Arcade made a face. "I try not to."

Alex shrugged. Human food wasn't his area of expertise anyway.

She offered him a cake. "Want some?"

Alex grimaced and shook his head. He doubted whatever this ancient, processed stuff was would sit well with him. He was an obligate carnivore, and he preferred his meat so rare it was still screaming. Dana had always been trying to offer him bits of her snacks; the few times he'd accepted, just for her sake, his body hadn't known what to do with them. He frowned, the memory leaving him feeling forlorn. Hell, it seemed like that had happened only a few weeks ago. For him, it _had_. But now…

She shrugged and took a bite out of it. "Wohks foh' meh." She swallowed. "I wish they'd left recipes around before they blew the world up," she sighed. "Be nice if mole rat and gecko kept this long. Or if I knew how to make that cream filling. It's divine."

Alex doubted that centuries-old, prepackaged and processed food was the pinnacle of the old world's cuisine, but refrained from commenting.

Curiously enough, the vault overseer's room was also located in the cafeteria. Alex supposed it would be the vault's control center; it ended up being an office of sorts. It looked kind of like a conference room, or at least the remains of one. A few plush chairs surrounded a desk that had been completely overgrown with flowers and ferns; over the desk hung several screens that might have been camera feeds at some point in time.

The rest of the room was rather cluttered. Two chalkboards covered a large portion of the far wall, and Cain wasted a few minutes rifling through each and every wall locker she came across. Next to some empty shelves sat a smaller desk with an active terminal – this managed to distract Cain from gathering up every little trinket she could find long enough to read the logged information.

"Yields continue to improve," she began. "Splicing together cultivar GN188 with the existing corn samples has produced a hybrid that responds better to the artificial lights we have. On a side note, Dr. Peters has missed his third straight day due to illness. His work ethic hasn't exactly been stellar to this point, so I'm requesting confirmation from the clinic that he is in fact sick."

She leaned back. "Huh. This looks like it's from the overseer, not our mystery explorer. Maybe they didn't get this far."

"There's more in here," Arcade pointed out. "There might be information about the work they did down here."

"Maybe," Cain agreed, looking over the next entry. "On a lark, the guys down in pest control sent up a sample of a substance one of their specimens secretes to attract insects. Tests show that the substance has a mood altering effect on smaller mammals. If anyone volunteers, we can begin human testing soon. Quite a number of the staff have begun to show symptoms of some sort of viral infection. I've begun to order them to stay in bed and recover, but at this rate there won't be anyone left to do the research!"

"A sudden viral outbreak?" Arcade muttered. "That's not ominous or anything."

Alex frowned, privately agreeing. Of course, he tended to get a little paranoid where the word 'virus' was concerned. Sometimes it was easy to forget that a viral infection usually just meant a few days in bed. _Usually._

"Well, it was years ago, right? Whatever it was is gone now. Probably. Let's look at the last one.

"Not much to report today. The mood is unusually somber in the wake of Dr. Peter's passing. There's a strange rumor going around that the commotion downstairs was caused by, of all things, Dr. Peter's corpse suddenly animating and attacking people. I don't know who would start such a vicious rumor, but it's in exceptionally bad taste.

"Well," Cain finished. "That's a new one. Hey – Alex? You okay?"

Alex was not okay. Most of the message had meant little to him, but that last bit had hit him hard. He remembered another time a patient had risen up from the dead. It was hard to forget the circumstances of his birth, after all; that first panicked night was all but branded into his mind.

"Let me see that," he demanded hoarsely, scrolling through the terminal's messages. "That's it?" he said, eyes flying over the logged entries. "There's nothing else here?"

"No, not on this one, anyway." Cain peered at him curiously. "What's wrong? You're about twice as pale as you used to, and I didn't even know that was _possible._"

"I don't know," Alex said honestly. "But I really don't like this. This is starting to remind me of something that… look, let's just say it was bad, okay?" A virus, people seemingly waking from the dead… but there was no trace of Blacklight here. He'd _know_. Instead, this place was infested with walking plants. Walking human-shaped plants…

"Of course, mister amnesiac who does not remember anything whatsoever," Arcade said doubtfully. "When you feel like sharing the rest of your sudden knowledge with the rest of us mere mortals, let us know, okay?"

Alex shook his head. "I don't_ know _anything. I just have a bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, well, I think that may well be the one point of common ground we have right now," the doctor replied, unconvinced.

"The only thing I'm feeling is that this place could really use a new air filter," Cain commented. "Even Freeside smells better than this. No offense."

Arcade sighed. "None taken. I don't run the place."

There wasn't much else of interest in the room. Cain groused a bit about that – she'd hoped that the mainframe would be in the overseer's office, but it was quickly clear that there weren't any cohesive data records on the terminal. In the end, they left the room only a tantalizing but incomplete scrap of information and two bottles of soda richer.

There were a lot of dead ends and small rooms in the general cafeteria area, but eventually they managed to find a staircase leading down to the gardens below.

"Careful," Alex warned as they descended the stairs. "Lot of plants down here. Perfect spot for those things to be hiding in. Don't move until you've checked them out."

It really was an awful spot to navigate past – the old atrium was divided into squares of greenery, even thicker and more concealing than the occasional patches of plant life they'd encountered across the vault. It wasn't helping much that Alex was distracted. He knew that he was almost undoubtedly the keenest member of the party – if anyone should have been keeping an eye out for hiding enemies, it was him – but it was hard to focus when his mind was whirling in overdrive and the thick reek of must and mold clenched down on him like a fist. It was _possible_ that this Dr. Peter's reanimation had just been a rumor like those naïve civilians had thought, but it was the same kind of _possible _as Blackwatch deciding to give up on hunting him down or Cain losing interest in all of his secrets. He knew better than that – and always planning for the worst was part of what had kept him alive for so long. They needed to find another terminal, another chapter to this story. Something to put his suspicions to rest, one way or another.

On the other hand, a plant monster leaping at his teammates was an effective way to pull him out of his thoughts. He snarled and sprang at the creature, meeting it in midair, slamming it into the wall, and proceeding to pound it down into a large green smear.

Unfortunately, this had the effect of rousing every other spore creature in the room. Which happened to be a lot of them.

The next minute passed in a blur of gunshots, punching things, and Arcade getting to prove that he did, in fact, know how to use his gun. Cain might have been a better shot, but his weapon had more of an effect – where bullets simply tore through the plants, his blasts burned them. A couple of cases even melted into piles of gently glowing slop, and Alex silently resolved to try and keep on Arcade's good side. He kicked around a few of the plants nearest to him, but the farther ones were already dead by the time he had a chance to intervene.

After that, the garden was relatively free of surprises, bar Cain nearly stepping on one plant thing that had apparently missed the memo earlier. Alex was the quickest to deal with it, throwing it halfway across the room. Really, these things were pathetic – the slightest amount of force and they splattered. How were these even supposed to be a threat?

On the south end of the atrium was a doorway to a room labeled Utility. Inside, they found a large, dangerously-sparking piece of broken machinery in the center of the room, and several weapons lockers scattered around it. Cain took about fifteen seconds to examine the setup, then went straight for the lockers, fluidly sidling through the narrow spaces between the machine and the wall.

"I really do not think that is a good idea," Arcade ventured from the doorway, cringing with a stray flicker of electricity missed her ear by inches.

"I wasn't asking you," Cain replied, rifling through yet another wall locker. "Besides, my boots are insulated. Totally safe. I think. Ooh, is that a flamer?"

Alex blinked as she struggled to heft an honest-to-god flamethrower out of the locker. It had been wedged in a too-small space between two shelves, and Cain wasn't exactly the strongest person he'd ever met. She didn't have much room to maneuver, what with the machine behind her, but that wasn't stopping her. He was less interested in her efforts and more interested in the flamethrower itself, though. He hadn't seen one of those in a while. It had been a while since he'd had any fun with one of those. He preferred his own claws and blades for efficiency, but he'd eaten too many pyromaniacs to _not_ get a thrill out of a good explosive. But on the other hand… he frowned. They were a couple stories underground and surrounded by plants. It probably wouldn't end well. Logic was so annoying at times…

"Do you really want to carry that around?" Arcade wondered, watching her struggle to get the flamethrower free without backing into the wildly sparking machinery behind her. "Not for anything, but that looks rather heavy. Also. Big metal thing. Massive thing spitting out huge amounts of electrical discharge. Bad combination."

"Just – give – me – a minute – and… _yes_!" she exulted, tugging free her prize. "Something like this could fetch a good amount of caps."

Alex frowned. Why anyone would want a handful of bottlecaps over a flamethrower was beyond him.

"Cain, stop it and get away from that thing before it fries – _oh my god get back_!" The doctor grimaced as a spark leapt out and connected with the locker she was in the process of opening.

She briefly let go, wringing out her left hand. "Ow!"

"Cain, please. Just looking at this is painful."

"Will you stop that?" Cain demanded, collecting what looked like batteries of some sort from the locker. "I'm fine!"

Arcade sighed and turned to Alex. "I can't watch."

"Then don't," came the reply. And then, "_Ow_. Hey, that kind of tingles."

Alex eyed the broken machinery warily. Electricity was not one of his favorite things – Captain Cross had taught him all about that. But hey, if Cain wanted to go blatantly risk her life, that wasn't his problem.

…He frowned. _Was _it? He wouldn't go as far to say that Cain or Arcade were _friends_, per se, but he knew them and they knew him and neither of them were trying to kill each other. That was more than he could usually say for anyone. That meant something, didn't it?

"And done!" Cain emerged from behind the machine, red hair standing up and a stark singe mark on her hat. "Found some energy cells, if you're running low. Hey, why are you shivering?"

"Desperately trying to figure out how you aren't dead," Arcade replied honestly.

"Hey, have a little faith!" she protested, frowning and poking him on the arm. Arcade flinched at the slight static shock. "I stopped asking myself that ages ago. Anyway, here." She proffered him a handful of faintly glowing power cells. "Thought you might need them."

Arcade mutely accepted them, shaking his head all the while.

Alex cocked his head. "What are those?"

"I'd needle you on how you seem to know absolutely nothing about anything at all, but I'll save it for later. Energy cells," Cain replied. "They power certain kinds of plasma weapons, in case you have no idea what those are, either. Arcade has a plasma pistol. Small, but pretty effective when you need something melted."

Alex didn't. Okay. Green glowy guns were plasma weapons. Fired what appeared to be energy projectiles and gave him positively _hellish _indigestion when eaten. Good to know.

"Found some .308s, too." Cain patted her rifle. "And nothing went wrong! Told you everything would be okay. …Uh, by the way, I kind of can't feel my hand. Is this normal?"

Arcade sighed. "All right, sit down." She obediently sat down cross-legged, and he knelt next to her and took her left hand. She had long fingers, Alex idly noted, but to call her hands delicate would have done a disservice to the several calluses and scars that decorated them. He wondered how she'd gotten them.

"Yeah, that's a burn. Not particularly bad, but you may not want to move it around much once feeling comes back. Can you wiggle your fingers?"

Cain poked him in the chest.

"I'm going to take that as a yes," he sighed. "It's just lingering numbness from the shock; it'll go away soon. Here, I've got some aloe for the burn."

Cain watched as he took a salve and a roll of clean bandages from his pack. "Why not just use a stimpak?" she wondered aloud as he evenly spread the salve on her singed hand and started with the wrappings.

"If it had been the other hand, I would," he said, carefully bandaging around the device on her arm. "This would not be a good place to hurt your dominant hand. As it is, this should clear up in a day or so, and I'm not made of stimpaks."

Cain shrugged, and Arcade made a noise of complaint when the movement caused his latest bandage to unravel. "I just use stims when this happens."

"Yes, well, I'm a _doctor_. There are other ways to treat injuries. It's best to save the stimpaks for serious situations." He paused to inspect his handiwork. "Okay, done. You'll have just have to manage with your pistol for a day; I'm not sure how well you could use that hunting rifle with one hand."

"Won't be a problem," Cain said, standing up. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Arcade replied, putting away the salve. "I don't suppose begging you to stay away from massive sparking machines in the future would do any good, would it?"

Cain's face scrunched up in thought. "Nah," she finally decided. "Sorry. But I'll be careful!"

Alex had been half-watching the exchange and half-wondering what a stimpak was. He cocked his head when Arcade at last got up. "Are you ready?"

"Yep! Alex, will you carry this?" Alex blinked as the flamethrower was suddenly pressed into his hands. "Thanks, you're a lifesaver."

It took him a few seconds to process what had just happened. "Hey!"

"Well, _I_ can't carry it," Cain protested. "Not supposed to be using both hands. Doctor's orders."

"Leave me out of this," Arcade sighed.

"I need both of my hands to fight, you know," Alex grated.

"Just tie it to your back," Cain advised. "There's straps on it for that sort of thing."

Realizing he wasn't going to get out of this, Alex grumpily complied and secured the straps around his arms. He did not like the arrangement. The flamethrower bounced awkwardly against his back when he moved, and if he weaponized his arms at all, he could easily cut the straps to pieces by accident. He'd have to be careful with the upper parts of his arms until he could get this thing off.

On the bright side, he now had his own flamethrower. That could come in handy.

There were two more doors on the north end of the atrium – one straight across and one to the west. Cain headed for the closer one, and her two companions dutifully followed.

"Well, this is the clinic," Arcade noted, eying the labeled entryway as they went into the next room. "I find it mildly depressing that it actually looks to be in better shape than what we have at Freeside."

"Gotta love the free medical supplies," Cain agreed, stashing away the contents of a first-aid kit. Having one hand covered in an unwieldy glove of bandages slowed her down, but only slightly. "Not like they're using them anymore, anyway."

The room itself was empty of plant-creatures, which was a relief after the gardens. Another terminal sat on a rusty desk; Cain had powered it up and was poring over its contents before Arcade had finished mentioning it.

"Alex, you might want to take a look at this," she said after a minute's quiet. Alex looked up curiously. "There's more on that Dr. Peter guy."

In a flash, he was by her side, almost intrusively close as he scanned over the messages with her. "These look like the medical records," he said.

"Well, we would happen to be in a clinic," Arcade pointed out. "Forgive me for not keeling over in surprise."

Alex ignored him, eyes glued to the string of messages. According to these records, Dr. Peter had fallen ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. As his condition worsened, two more groups of patients had been admitted to the medical facility with the same symptoms. In spite of all of their treatments, the doctor was the first of them to die. An autopsy had revealed the man's lungs to be full of an unknown fungus, which had oddly continued to grow even after its host had died.

And then, the very last entry confirmed it – Dr. Peter had risen from the dead, before the nurse's eyes. Except it wasn't quite like Alex's case. He hadn't been there to witness it, but according to this report, there was no sign of intelligence – or aggression had utterly overpowered it. The newly reanimated man had proceeded to attack the medical staff, and was subsequently sealed away. Not as powerful as he was, then. What was going on here?

He didn't like this at all. Human-shaped plants wandering around, an unknown contagion... fungal infection in the lungs…

It hit him.

"Oh, shit," he swore, stepping back. "Oh. _Hell. _This is just all kinds of wrong."

Cain tilted her head. "Alex?"

"I get it now," he growled, gesturing at the open door. "I get what happened here. And it is not pretty. Those things, they're just husks. A husk of a person. God," and Alex's voice sounded even hoarser than usual. "It's like the fucking Infected all over again."

"The Infected?" Arcade demanded.

Alex swore under his breath. "_Later_," he said harshly. "Look, those things we've been fighting – they were people once. I can't believe I didn't see this earlier. I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious. Plant colonies don't just grow to look like close replicas of human beings on a whim. And it's not like there was somebody around making topiaries. I just didn't…"

That chapter of his life was over – had been over for close to five years. Blackwatch had never left him alone, no, but some mixture of his and their efforts had purged Manhattan of its sickness in due time. He'd chased the last dregs of the Infection to their source – the derelict subways, the sewers – and consumed it down to the last fleck of diseased biomass. The city had taken longer to heal, but it had scabbed over its wounds eventually, new life filling into those areas that had been destroyed – and he'd gone on from above, his prey changing from straggling Infected to street gangs and lowlifes, withdrawing to his shadows. Redlight's extinction had been a gradual thing, but an absolute one; to see something so disturbingly akin to it shocked him.

On the other hand, five years had turned into about two hundred and fifty in the blink of an eye… he didn't really have the right of _expecting_ anything anymore.

"I wouldn't have exactly considered parasitic fungus spores to be _obvious_." The doctor still didn't seem willing to drop it.

"Yeah, well, you and me have got some different areas of expertise," Mercer snapped. "Look, I think I know what happened. So this vault, it's agricultural research, right? Fuck if I know what they were doing here, I wasn't a part of this. At some point, they managed to create a fungus capable of infecting humans. Accident, maybe, or they just weren't doing a good enough job containing it. It got out and killed the inhabitants, starting with the researchers. But when they were dead, the stuff inside them wasn't – I don't know, I'm not an expert on fungal infections – and it got into their nervous systems, or something."

"And then they started walking around?" Arcade said skeptically. "Because I really do not think that's how this works."

"Three words," Cain said. "Pre-War Science." She frowned. "Actually, that's two words. Two and a half. Ish."

The doctor blinked. "Forget I said anything."

The three digested the situation for a few moments. "Wow," Cain said. "That is really, really fucked up. So, these things walking around, they're the Vault's inhabitants? Or anyone else who wandered in here. Probably everyone Hildern sent in. Without saying anything about the man-eating infectious plants. _Dick._"

"What's left of them, anyway," Arcade said grimly. "They still looked like people when the last of vault dwellers were getting attacked, but by now, the human bits have all rotted away." He sighed through his nose. "You know, the Wasteland has enough debilitating diseases without them creating more just for kicks. The sooner we get out of here, the better. According from these terminals, it manifests itself in the lungs first; if either of you come down with a chronic cough, let me know."

"Duly noted." Cain looked out towards the atrium. "What the hell were they _doing_ here?" she wondered. "I mean, I shouldn't be surprised. We're talking about the same kind of science that decided it'd be fun to see what happens when you fuse a coyote with a rattlesnake, but… hell."

"I don't know." Alex said, voice low. "But whoever they were… they're lucky they're already dead, or I'd kill them myself."

Nobody had much to say after that particular proclamation.

After cleaning out the clinic for supplies – an altogether quiet and stilted affair – they looped back into the empty gardens and to the second door. This one was labeled Quarters, and when Cain pressed the button at the side, it only beeped dolefully. Another push gave the same result.

"Damn. It's locked." Cain pursed her lips and rummaged through her pockets, pulling out a bobby pin. "Well, good thing I always carry these around."

"How do you plan on using that?" Arcade wasn't impressed. "I'm not exactly seeing any padlocks or keyholes here."

"I've seen these types of doors before. There's an override keyhole, in case the door stops working," Cain replied, running her hand over the door's side. "Aha! Here we go…" She fiddled around with her lockpick. Alex watched with mild interest. Lockpicking had never been a useful skill to somebody who could just as easily bash a door down, but he had to wonder where she'd picked it up. It wasn't exactly the sort of skill an honest person toted around.

"And… there!" Cain pulled out the bobby pin with a triumphant flourish as the door slid open.

Arcade sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not going to ask how often you use those, because I get the distinct feeling I'm not going to like the answer."

"A wise choice, Doc."

The fourth level was pretty obviously a residential area by this point, unlike the previous three. The halls were lit by dim, flickering strips, but it was pretty dark in the rooms. Cain's little arm-device – which was apparently called a Pip-Boy, when he asked – doubled as a flashlight, but after turning it on once and immediately getting spotted by a group of mantises, nobody felt particularly keen on using it. Alex managed just fine with some subtle adjustments to his eyes, but there was a lot of bumping and muffled curses coming from Arcade's general direction.

The rooms here were dormitories. Clothes lockers, desks, broken terminals, one or two beds – the vault dwellers' possessions were pretty sparse, usually consisting of a few outfits and jumpsuits. Some had small bundles of money – dollar bills, which Alex recognized – and a few other items cropped up from time to time, like children's toys or bottles of liquor. Some of the rooms were a mess of overgrown plants, but a couple of them were surprisingly empty, looking eerily normal in the gloom.

In the third dormitory, they were rudely interrupted by the fact that Vault 22's original inhabitants were still around and weren't taking visitors. Having a plant monster literally jump out from under a bed was a shock, but Cain was quick on the draw and managed to put enough holes in it to make it stop moving.

After that, they checked out the rooms a little more carefully.

"Are you sure you don't know anything about this project, Alex?" Arcade broke the silence as they rounded a bend in the corridor. Clearly, his mind was still on the conversation earlier. "You seem to have a rather… _uncanny_ grasp on the situation here."

"Does he look all green and spongy to you?" Cain said, as Alex tensed like a hunting hound and then stalked over towards another mound of foliage. "Nah, I bet with him, they were doing something with FEV and Deathclaws." She glanced over towards his arms, which had once again transformed into his vicious claws. "And, um, spiky things. And hoodies. I've never seen a deathclaw in a hoodie, actually. Although I think you come pretty close. So, were you always a jackass, or did that come after the whole spiky arms thing? Not that you're a _jackass_, but…" She paused, looking thoughtful, as if it had suddenly occurred to her that Alex _was, _in fact, a jackass. "You're kind of a jackass."

"Can you two quit speculating and start killing things already?" Alex demanded tetchily, jabbing his claws down into what looked like a nondescript pile of moss before it took offense to said jabbing. "Because there's still a lot of stuff that needs killing."

"Oh, fine," Cain grumped, reloading her pistol. "But we're getting back to the speculating part later!"

"No, you're _not_," Alex ground.

"_Why?_" Good god, only this woman would start pouting in the middle of a fight with vegetable zombies.

He sighed through his nose. "It's… complicated. Later, all right? We're doing this when _I_ want to."

Alex was surprised when her response was an "Okay," followed by a quick series of gunshots. He'd been expecting resistance, not… _consideration._ Unless she was just playing a longer game with him. Gah, he hated having to think about things.

These spore creatures were larger than the ones they'd seen before, and considerably tougher as well. He sheared one's arm clean off, only to have it come clawing at him with the other, completely unfazed by the loss of limb. One solid punch to center mass was still sufficient to destroy it, but Cain and Arcade lacked the sort of strength to casually toss around cars, and he ended up landing the last blow to three of the four that had reared their ugly heads.

There were two more rooms after that before a short stairwell leading up. The one on the left was empty, save for an overturned table. The one on the right was a little more striking.

It was lit, and brightly; a lamp shone brightly from a cluttered shelf, somehow still running after how many years. The room itself was a mess; furniture was torn and cast askew, the red vinyl covered with flowers and ferns.

And tucked in the corner was a crib, upon which lay a tiny plant creature.

Cain exhaled sharply. Arcade started to say something, but quickly trailed off. Alex made no sound; he stared at the crib, neck prickling as he eyed an old teddy bear lying in a patch of mushrooms next to the ex-child. He wasn't shocked over what had obviously happened – nobody who stayed in the Vault would have been spared, after all. Diseases weren't the sort of enemy that differentiated between the strong and the innocent. But no matter how hardened_ his_ viewpoint was, the thousands of personalities he'd subsumed over his lifetime blanched at the sight before him – and their horror leached out into his own thoughts.

There was a sharp crack, and he jumped. Cain's pistol was raised in a slightly shaking hand; when he looked back to the crib, it had been shattered, its occupant little more than a green stain.

A long silence followed that.

"I don't want to think of what we just saw," Cain said, voice unusually serious. "I just… fuck_._ I could use a cigarette right now."

"If we weren't several floors underground and surrounded by highly flammable things, I wouldn't begrudge you one," Arcade said.

"Later, then." Cain started up the stairs. "But I definitely need one _holy fuck_."

The last words had not been aimed towards cigarettes, but rather the enormous _thing_ at the top of the stairs. It looked sort of like a venus flytrap, if venus flytraps were about six feet tall and snapped their jaws together like angry pit bulls.

It reared back like a snake about to strike, then _spat_ something at Cain. Alex roughly shoved her aside, hissing when the liquid collided with his arm. His biomass burned and sizzled as the poison ate into his flesh—

Then his other arm was clawed and he sheared that part away, cutting out the affected area before the poison could spread. A second later and both arms were weaponized, healing over the damage. He sprang up the staircase and swiped through the plant's stalk, snapping it like a dandelion.

He kicked at the plant's massive jaws, pushing them out of the way. "What the hell were they _making_ down here?" he demanded, gesturing widely with his claws. "What the hell is this thing supposed to be?"

Cain shrugged as she climbed up the steps to stand next to him. "Dude, welcome to the Mojave."

"Err, I think I have to agree with Mercer here on this one. I was much happier living in a world where _that_," Arcade gestured to the now-dead plant, "did not exist."

"Well, it's dead now." Cain glanced back over at Alex. "Thanks for the pushy rescue thing, by the way. In the future, though, I bruise easily."

Past the stairs, there were two more dormitories, both crawling with spore carriers. And then…

"Damn it," Alex swore. "It's a dead end."

"Crap. There's no other way down. I was hoping there'd be some other staircase or something, you know?" Cain sighed and turned to Alex. "Can you clear that stairway without causing the whole thing to come down on us?"

"I can try." Alex frowned. "Can't think of anything else we could do."

They backtracked their way through the fourth level without incident – everything that would have gotten in their way was already dead, after all. It was only a matter of retracing their steps and making their way through the mess of a cafeteria before they were back at the ruined stairwell.

"You sure you can dig through that?" Cain asked, giving the elevator another halfhearted kick. "Because, uh… yeah. That's one hell of a mess."

"Positive," Alex grunted. His face settled into a scowl as he surveyed the damage. It looked like part of the ceiling had caved in, and somebody had shoved as much junk as they could into the hole to plug it up – lockers, tables, desks. Whatever the case had been, it was extremely inconvenient now.

But Alex had lifted far heavier things in his time, and he wasn't going to let something like this daunt him. It was tedious work, though. He could have clawed his way through the junk easily, but the trick here was to destroy some things and leave others standing – making enough room to pass through while supporting the ceiling. He tried to move larger, sturdier things to the side as supports for the rest of the tunnel, while crushing the rest down.

Luckily, only about half the stairs were blocked. A little ways down, Alex found that the rest of the way was relatively clear. He casually killed the two mantises he found scuttling around on the lower half of the stairwell, then turned back to his handiwork. His makeshift supports didn't collapse when he gave them a weak kick, so he figured they were steady. He spotted a mangled gun of some sort lying on the ground - he must have accidentally destroyed it while he was pushing the rubble around. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He didn't need guns anyway.

"I think we're good," he called up.

Cain gingerly picked her way through the path he'd cleared. "Wow. Not a bad job at all."

Alex just shrugged. "If it doesn't hold up, I'm sure I'll be able to do something on the way back."

Arcade met them a few seconds later, looking extremely uncomfortable in the makeshift tunnel. They continued down to the fifth floor rather quickly; none of them were particularly eager to linger in the cave-in.

The fifth floor was the most overgrown yet – the air was thick was musty, and only patches of the metal flooring were visible beneath the thriving veneer of plant life. It was nearly impossible to tell where the plant monsters were hiding, so Alex took point. It was the most pragmatic thing to do, really, when you were the only person who wouldn't be that bothered by having a hole clawed through your chest.

It was just as well. The ex-Vault-dwellers down here were even meaner, and they hardly seemed to notice gunshots at all. Cain decided to save her ammunition once she saw how little of an effect her nine-millimeter was having. She tried to bring out her rifle, but after a couple of shots, even she had to accept that using one hand just didn't cut it.

They quickly fell into a pattern. Alex went ahead and did what he did best – namely, reducing everything in his path to a finely-blended paste – then let Cain and Arcade search the rooms when the way was clear. There was a lot more scientific-looking stuff on this floor, samples and laboratory equipment that prickled his skin with phantom recognition. Aside from a few bundles of old money and the occasional bit of ammunition, though, there wasn't much of value to be found.

Then there was the case where Alex opened a door and found another one of the venus flytrap things right in his face. He lost a second to surprise, and by the time he managed to process that there was a venus flytrap thing right in his face, it had already spat a stream of poison at him.

There wasn't enough time to form his armor. He ducked, but the thing was just too damn close; for all his effort, he ended up getting a gob of acid to the face instead of the chest. He hissed through clenched teeth as he viciously yanked the plant out of the ground, ripping it in half and tossing it aside. The damage was superficial, but that didn't mean he particularly enjoyed the sensation of something eating away at his skin.

Apparently it looked as bad as it felt, because when he turned around to give the all-clear, both Cain and Arcade gasped. His depth perception was a little off, and he frowned; one of his eyes wasn't working anymore.

"Holy _shit_, Alex, your _face-_"

"It's not as bad as it looks," he grated, dragging a hand over his face and wiping it against the wall. It got some of the poison off, at least, and the rest of it was gradually burning itself out. He let his face reform, tendrils of biomass darting out from under his skin to reposition his features and patch over the damage.

When his face stopped rearranging itself long enough to let him see, Arcade's eyebrows were nearly level with his hairline. Cain merely blinked once, then smiled at him, and he glared at her in response.

"Later, right?" she reminded him.

He growled back.

A quick turn around the corner revealed that somebody had piled a bunch of lockers in an attempt to blockade off the rest of the hall. Cain nimbly climbed over the mess, showing surprising dexterity in spite of the numerous bags and weapons that weighed her down. Alex patiently waited for her to finish, then stuck his arms in the middle of the pile and casually crushed the lockers to the side.

She gave him the finger for that.

Past this was a slight fork in the hallway; the corridor continued off in one direction, but ended with a small protrusion on another. The shorter area ended in three large vents, blocked off by wire mesh.

"This looks like the air distribution for the vault," Arcade noted. "It's possible that the spores that caused this disease originated on this level and then got circulated throughout the vault."

"What makes you think that?" Alex asked.

Arcade flipped his palms over. "Judging by the records we found in the clinic, the vault's inhabitants began contracting the disease in droves. If it had spread naturally, things wouldn't have progressed nearly as quickly – people that came into contact with patient zero might have come down with symptoms around the time he died, and so on and so forth. Having so many people suddenly get sick at the same time means that they all caught it at the same time, and even if all of them had been in contact with, say, a plant that had originally produced the spores, the odds of everyone contracting the disease is low. It takes more exposure than that. Now, if the spores had been regularly circulating around the vault's airways, something everyone was constantly exposed to… then the turnout suddenly makes much more sense."

Cain had taken a few steps closer to the vents and had her hands outstretched, coat flapping. "Ooh. Breezy."

Arcade shot her an irritated glance. "Are you even paying attention?"

"Spores circulated throughout the vault, everyone got sick at once, giant fans feel nice. If that's what you were talking about, then yeah. Incidentally, that probably doesn't mean anything good for us, but you're a doctor, so hopefully we won't die."

The doctor shook his head. "How in the world did you convince me to follow you?" he sighed.

"In your question lies the answer, Doc."

"My knowledge of Zen Buddhism is a mite fuzzy, but I'm fairly certain there are parts forbidding the use of its wisdom for_ being really annoying_."

"Really? I don't know what Zen is, but I'll keep that in mind if I see it."

"...Just got to remember, Gannon, staying at the Fort _still_ probably would have been a bigger waste of time." Arcade sighed. "Almost definitely."

Cain just smirked. "Come on, we're on a mission."

They searched through another wide laboratory, filled with scientific implements and ravenous plants from hell. In the next room over, however, they struck jackpot.

"Bingo," Cain said, ushering them in. "If this isn't what we're here for, I'll eat my hat."

Alex looked around. The room was small and largely empty, and refreshingly devoid of foliage. A couple of desks were lined around the near wall, but he was more interested in the back of the room. The back wall was practically covered in machinery, all hooked up to a large computer.

Cain was inspecting something she'd found on one of the desks. "Hey, this is the swipe card for the elevator!" she exclaimed, giving the thing an accusing glare. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have saved us by being located somewhere else than the very bottom of this mess?"

"But this way, we got the whole scenic route," Arcade quipped. "Flesh-eating plants of extremely dubious origin, watching our least talkative teammate sprout claws. I thought that was your sort of thing?"

"Huh." Cain considered it. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Arcade clapped a hand to his face. "I was being sarcastic."

She ignored him. "This looks like the mainframe Hildern mentioned," she said, tapping a large monitor. If it's not, I think I'll start screaming. Is there – ah, there's a port." She fished out a slightly battered-looking computer chip from one of her endless sashes and slid it in. "Now we wait," she finished ominously.

Alex blinked. "For what?"

"For –" With a small click, the computer relinquished the chip. "That," she said, somewhat anticlimactically. "Well," she continued, plucking it from the port. "That's what we came for. After all that bullshit, I've finally got something worth some caps. Honestly, I should have known there'd be something weird trying to eat me down here."

Alex stared. "You can't be thinking of giving it back to that guy," he said slowly. Anyone who'd spent enough time with him would have recognized the tone as dangerous. "Not after what we've seen."

"Hey, I didn't come down here for nothing!" Cain protested.

"This isn't about fucking money!" the hooded man growled. "You can't let that data get out there. Look at what it created! Have you been fucking _paying attention_ since we got in here?" He took a deep breath to steady himself, aware that his arms were starting to writhe. "Look, I've _seen_ this before. Not this, but something like this. Right now, it's contained. I know what it looks like when it isn't."

"Oh, you have?" Cain returned pointedly. "Really? When?"

Alex closed his mouth and glared wordlessly at her.

"Mercer's right." Alex glanced at Arcade, surprised; he hadn't expected the doctor's support. "I won't deny that this looked promising when we first walked in here. Being able to easily grow staple crops in the Mojave is an alluring dream, anyone would agree. But that was before we saw, well…" He gestured around. "All of this. This isn't what you came looking for. This data isn't about growing plants, it's about growing monsters. I doubt anything good could come of it."

"I know, but – that guy, Hildern, he's with the NCR. Even if he seemed like kind of a dick. I might not be best friends with them, but they've usually got their hearts in the right place, underneath all the paperwork and executive meddling."

"It'd be safer to give this to the _Legion_. At least we know they'd just destroy it."

"I_ know_ that, I just – look, can't we just warn them not to do whatever Pre-War screwing around led to the plant zombie thing?"

Alex was growing very frustrated with this whole argument. The right course of action was pretty fucking clear to him, and listening to Cain bicker back and forth to try and rationalize _not_ destroying what could be the start of the next apocalypse was wearing him down fast.

Words were getting nowhere, and he didn't like words anyway. So he went with the next best solution that didn't involve horribly maiming anyone and slammed his fist through the mainframe, then held his open hand out to the protesting woman in an obvious gesture. _Hand it over._

Cain slowly looked from the ruined machine to Alex's outstretched hand. "Was that really necessary?" she asked weakly.

Alex flexed his fingers in response.

"Nothing good's going to come of this data," Arcade insisted. "We've got a plant that's capable of growing in the worst conditions, man-sized venus flytraps that spit poison, and let's not forget, an airborne disease that _turns people into lichen-overgrown husks_. The Vault may not have created them intentionally, but their experimenting led to some very nasty results. Whatever they were working with _wasn't safe_. Trying again could easily produce something just as bad, and this time, it wouldn't be contained in a vault."

Cain bit her lip. "Okay, okay, I _get _it. I… fine." She took one last longing glance at the chip, then sighed and handed it to Alex. "Get rid of it. But we're going back anyway. If nothing else, somebody's got to tell Hildern to stop sending mercenaries into this tomb."

Alex nodded. "For what it's worth, you're doing the right thing."

She grimaced. "I _know_ that. That's why I'm _doing_ it. I just wish doing the right thing actually paid."

"Yeah, don't we all," he grunted. Cain only had a moment to ponder that before his fist closed over the chip. He squeezed once; when his fingers unfolded, only a lump of malformed metal remained.

"Goodbye, a thousand caps," she lamented. "Hardly knew you."

"We'll find something else."

Cain sent a sidelong look at Alex. "I'll hold you to it. Come to think of it, somebody with your kind of strength would probably come in handy when it comes to odd jobs."

"I like keeping a low profile," he grated back.

She snorted. "Hate to say it, but you're not doing a very good job."

"As much fun as it is to stick around and banter," Arcade sighed, "hanging around down here may not be the best idea. I can't say that this was a rewarding trip, but at least it was enlightening. Let's just get out of here before our lungs start growing mushrooms inside of them."

"We can't just leave this place," Cain said. Arcade turned around, surprised. "It's like you said, isn't it? Pre-War science has fucked up enough things. We've already got cazadores and nightstalkers; we don't need plant zombies running around too. There's got to be some way to clean this place out. I mean, we're here, so it's kind of our problem now."

Alex tilted his head towards the flamethrower on his back. "I guess we could try burning the plants down," he offered. "But I doubt we have enough fuel."

Arcade shook his head. "No good. As long as any of the spores are still in the air, they can take and start it all over again. Not to mention, setting this place on fire with us still in it is a really bad idea."

Cain frowned. They were both right. They needed to somehow get all of the plants and their spores, and on every level. She doubted they'd have enough gas in the flamer to empty out this floor, much less the other four, and that'd still leave the air infested. It was enough to give her a headache.

_I could really use a cigarette right now,_ she lamented.

Then she blinked.

_Hey, wait…_

0o0o0

"This is a bad idea."

"Yes, Arcade, we get it," Cain said kindly.

"This is a _really_ bad idea."

"I don't know," Alex said, pouring the last of the fuel into the vent. A large puddle of it had already been spread across the floor between the openings. "It might just work." He cracked his knuckles and tossed the empty flamethrower aside. "All right, that's all of it."

"I am about to die," Arcade lamented.

The three of them were back in the hallway that ended with the vault's main air circulation. Alex had listened to Cain's plan with interest. Arcade had not been quite so eager to go along with it.

Cain clapped Arcade on the shoulder. "Hey, look at it this way. If you die, we're going to die too, so it's not like you got off worse or anything."

"I probably won't."

"Alex, shh. We're supposed to be a team."

"You're insane," the doctor complained. "Both of you. Did it occur to you that you're going to light this place up like a bonfire while we're still inside of it?"

"Come on, we'll be fine! Probably."

"Just excuse me while I go and compose an epitaph."

Alex rolled his eyes. It had been amusing at first, but now Arcade was starting to grate on him. "Are we ready?"

"_No_!"

"Don't mind the doc, he doesn't count right now." Cain took a cigarette out from her pack and flicked open her lighter. "Yeah. Just give me a moment."

She took a long drag on the cigarette, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "All right. Let's do this thing."

"Wait." She turned around; Alex had stepped forward, one hand outstretched. "Let me be the one to toss it. I've got a stronger arm than you do."

She shrugged and complied. "Hey, works for me. Uh… I think you might be overestimating yourself just a teensy bit," she added, as she saw how far Alex had backed away from the vent.

"I'm not," he said shortly, head tilted as he gauged the distance. A cigarette had neither inertia nor aerodynamics; otherwise, he'd be able to throw it much farther. "All right, now get behind me."

"Aww, how sweet," Cain said. "It's okay, you know; the chivalrous thing doesn't really suit you anyway."

Alex glared. "I'm not doing this because I'm a nice guy, I'm doing this because you two are a hell of a lot more flammable than I am."

"I was planning on throwing the thing and then running away," Cain said. "Around that bend in the hallway, maybe into the room behind it if I had enough time. Kind of far from it now, but we could try running back. There's another turn at the end of this hall. Might have enough time; it'd help if you could go just a bit farther."

"Nice of you to inform me of that part of the plan beforehand," Arcade muttered.

"I did! I think that was during the part where you were moaning in abject despair, though. Maybe you didn't hear me."

The hooded man inclined his head. "Well, that makes your end of the plan less stupidly suicidal," he admitted, after a moment's pause. "I was wondering how you were planning on surviving this. But it's still risky that way. It all depends on how big of a boom this makes, and I'm kind of rusty on this sort of thing."

"So was that a yes or a no? To the running, I mean."

Alex sighed. "I'm not in the business of it, but I make a pretty damn good wall. Just trust me on this, okay?"

Cain looked at him shrewdly. Alex usually had trouble figuring out when she was being serious or not, but right now that careless vibe of hers was gone.

"You positive about this? Like, really, really positive? Because I'm going to come back from the dead and haunt you if you're wrong."

He nodded curtly. She held his gaze for a moment longer, then headed back to stand behind him. Arcade followed, shaking his head repeatedly.

"All right. Count of three, I throw this thing, and you two _get down_. Otherwise, this is gonna hurt. A lot."

"Understatement of the year," Arcade snipped.

"Nah, I think I've heard worse."

"_One_," Alex said pointedly, and all potential banter was postponed.

"Two." He cocked his arm. The cigarette just seemed so anticlimactic – what he wouldn't have given for a grenade right now…

"And _three_," he grunted, and threw the thing with all his might. Immediately, his arms spread to his sides, widening into broad, thick makeshift shields. His eyes followed the cigarette as it cartwheeled through the air, center flickering orange as it spun towards the pool of gasoline –

A sizzling hiss split the air.

The resulting fireball was glorious. Even if it crisped his skin and forced him to regenerate the front of his body, Alex could appreciate a good explosion. There were too many pyromaniacs floating around in his head not to. This didn't quite match up to some of the best he'd seen – nothing came close to those thermobaric shells – but feeling the rush of superheated air roar over his biomass, he had to give it a seven for effort.

Those wild, thrilling few moments stretched on until the blazing air stopped rushing off the face of his shields. He waited a couple seconds more, standing up when he was sure that no second flares had caught. The shields sank back into his biomass in a blur of tendrils, reforming into normal human arms.

Behind him, Cain got to her feet. She was looking a bit red, and she was probably going to need a new hat, but she was in overall good condition.

"Do you think that did it?" she panted.

"I don't care if it did or not," Arcade commented, looking slightly dazed as he stared at his hands. "I'm not trying that again. Good lord, I'm still alive."

"See, I told you we'd be fine!"

"Forgive me for having my doubts," Arcade quipped.

Cain ignored him. "Neat trick with the arms," she told Alex. "Guess you weren't kidding."

"I'm never kidding."

She made a face. "Yeah, I didn't really have you pegged as the humorous type. Kind of a shame – you could use it."

Mercer rolled his eyes. "Thanks for the confidence vote. Can we get out of here now?"

"Hmm. I guess that's enough gallant life-risking for one day." He dearly hoped that her thoughtful pause just then hadn't been serious. "Yeah, why not?"

The scenery was considerably different on the way back to the staircase. A few scorch marks decorated the walls, and many of the plants were looking rather crispy. It smelled more like ash than mold, but that was an improvement in Alex's opinion.

Unfortunately, when they arrived at the stairs, Alex was faced with another problem – Cain and Arcade wanted to use the elevator, which Cain had so inconveniently found the key card to. One quick swipe and the damnable thing was open and ready for use.

"Are you sure this thing still works?" Alex said dubiously, not particularly eager to set foot into the now-opened elevator. It struck him as very small and enclosed, and just looking at it dredged up memories of terrified sobs, air thick with tension and the promise of blood, the bitter taste of betrayal–

"You'd be amazed how long this stuff holds up," Cain replied.

"And if it doesn't you're all going to plummet to the bottom of the shaft. Possibly to your deaths."

"That's a cheerful image. Who wants to go in first?"

"The stairs are still open," Alex said pointedly, gesturing to the unblocked stairwell.

"Good for you." Cain turned around to raise an eyebrow at him. "_Why _exactly do you want to backtrack all the way to the top?"

Alex grimaced. He didn't have a suitable answer to that, not one he particularly felt like sharing.

So he ended up riding the elevator with them, quietly staring at the ceiling as he took deep, even breaths and tried not to kill anyone.

After what seemed like an eternity, the doors finally slid open. Alex nearly tripped over himself in his haste to push past the others into glorious freedom.

"Hey, watch it!" Cain complained after getting shoved to the side. "What, you claustrophobic or something?"

"I don't like elevators," he said in a clipped voice, staring daggers at the lift they were climbing out of. If he never had to get into another one again, it would be too soon.

"Okay, fine, geez. I think I figured that one out." Cain rubbed her shoulder. "Just warn me next time you go all psycho, okay?"

"Let's just get moving," Alex grumbled. Around the corner, he could see the vault's first room – and a beautiful shaft of sunlight that streamed in through the vault's open door. "I want to get out of this place."

"I can't agree more," Arcade said, stepping gingerly out of the elevator. "I confess, Cain, you haven't done a great job marketing the 'adventuring' lifestyle to me yet."

"Oh, don't worry. There's plenty more things to try out."

"I was afraid you were going to say that," the doctor muttered.

They quickly crossed the threshold and back into the open desert. The sun was fairly low in the sky, and the cliffs cast long shadows on the sand.

"Never thought I'd be this happy to smell the desert air," Cain commented. "Come on – it's a long way to Camp McCarran, and we can get there by noon tomorrow if we cover some ground tonight."

"Wait." Alex gestured over to the vault's cog-shaped door, which lay ajar at the entrance. "Might want to seal the place. Just in case."

"How?" Arcade asked. "The door's off its track. It's not going to respond to any of the controls."

"Then let's put it back on?"

"…Mercer, do you have any idea how much that thing _weighs_?"

"I don't really care." Grunting, Alex hefted up the multi-ton door back into place, where it settled with a resounding clang. "There, that should do it."

There was a long and very awkward silence. "What?" Alex demanded, when he saw that his two companions were staring holes through him.

"All right," Cain said after a long pause. "Remember that explaining thing you owed up to earlier? Yeah, I think now would be a good time."

* * *

[Achievement Unlocked! **Plant Zombies** (10pts) –_Fuck you, science.]_


	11. The Hand We've Been Dealt

**Author's Note: A big thank-you to NanoMoose for co-writing a good part of the dialogue in this chapter. :D**

* * *

Alex held Cain's gaze for a few long moments before dropping his eyes with a resigned sigh.

"All right," he finally said. "Fine. But let's get away from this place and find somewhere to sit down first. This… could take a while."

"I know a place," Cain said, and Alex felt the faintest shiver of déjà vu – Dana had said those words, those _exact _words, when he had first found her. "They've got beds, and we could stock up on supplies while we're there. But it's a bit out of the way. We'd lose maybe half a day back to McCarran."

"Are you talking about the Followers' Outpost up north?" Arcade asked. At Cain's nod, he continued, "We might not get privacy there. We send somebody up there to resupply every few days. It's not an exact schedule, but we were almost due for it when I left. There might be somebody up there right now. They do usually stay the night."

"Drat," Cain sighed. "Well, guess we're roughing it tonight."

They settled for a rounded opening on the mountain path, about a fifteen-minute walk from the vault. It was a defensible enough position to satisfy Alex, with their backs against two steep crags. He slouched against the cliff face, watching as Cain laid out her bedrolls for makeshift seating.

"Not a poker player, Alex, are you?"

Alex glanced up, puzzled. Cain was looking at him expectantly. The comment had obviously been directed at him, but he had no idea where she'd mentally pulled poker from.

"…What?" he finally tried, when it became clear she was expecting a response.

"Poker. Play it, you do not." She gave him a small, guileless smile. "Maybe you could take it up. There's a secret to it you might find handy."

"What the hell are you talking about?" he growled, getting irritated. "I haven't got time for card games."

Arcade hid his growing smirk behind one hand as Cain made a frustrated noise. "I'm talking about _tells_. Little, habitual things that a person does that give things away, like whether you have a good hand or a bad one. Half of learning to play poker well is reading other people's tells; the other half is concealing your own. Nobody ever taught you either one, I think."

Alex glared wordlessly at her.

"Since I realized that about you, I've been counting. One: you aren't used to emotions. Two: you avoid people or follow them. No middle ground. Three: you know more than you should _and_ less. Four: the instincts you follow aren't the instincts most people do. I have more, and I'm sure Arcade could tell me others, but doctor-patient confidentiality and all." She spread her hands, palms out, and gave him a searching look. "I don't have enough to get a full picture, though. Good hand or bad hand. I can make a guess. Would you prefer that or do you want to go all in?"

Damn. Not even two days travelling with her and she had him pegged. Either Cain had the eyes of a hawk, or he really wasn't cut out for this 'dealing with people' thing.

"Well, it's not like I really have a choice, do I?" he asked dryly.

"Of course you have a choice! Either you _tell_ me what your deal is or I _guess_." She grinned at him. "I might be wrong. And either way, you could lie to me?"

"That's exactly what I'd be doing, if I thought I could get away with it," he said flatly. "Still thinking about it. But I don't think it'd work. Listen," he sighed. "I'm not amnesiac. Not really. But the truth is pretty messed up and even I'm missing some pieces. Wasn't in the mood to share it. Still don't want to, but since you _asked so nicely_…" He sent a glare at Cain, who flashed a smile back.

"Well, _that_ much is obvious." At Alex's raised eyebrows, Arcade rolled his eyes. "You asked fairly unusual questions for an amnesiac."

"What, you don't think it's fair for me to know who - or what - I'm travelling with? It's not like I'm threatening you. The fact is, we live in a post-nuclear apocalypse, and _messed up_ is a matter of perspective." She paused. "But you're not human, are you? Or not exactly."

"…No, I'm not." Alex grimaced. "Fine. Fine, I'll tell you. But don't blame me if you don't like what you hear."

Cain and Arcade waited patiently as the hooded man paced back and forth a few times while he gathered his thoughts, the low sun casting long shadows that stalked across the cliff behind him.

"All right, where the hell do I even start?" he finally wondered aloud. "Okay, you saw what happened in Vault 22, right? Experimental disease gets out of hand, everyone dies, place gets infested with monsters?"

Arcade frowned. "Yes?"

A grim smile touched Alex's lips. "That had _nothing_ on Manhattan."

"Manhattan, New York," Cain recited. "That's East Commonwealth. Long way. I've never been there. Never heard of any monster infestations out of there, either. But I'd never heard of plant zombies before today, so I guess we learn all the time."

"I'm surprised you recognize it," Alex commented. "Or that it's still standing enough to be recognizable, after what happened to Vegas. New York City would have been a prime target for the bombs, I think. But I don't know of any Commonwealth. And if I'm gonna damn myself with this, may as well go all out." He sighed. "You wouldn't have heard of any monster infestations because the whole thing was covered up to hell – as much as you can cover up about a million and a half people getting killed within the span of a month, anyway." A pause. "And because it happened a long time ago."

"I've only read about it. The Pre-War city, anyway - wait, before the _Commonwealth_? How long ago?"

"Try two and a half centuries."

"Two and a half centuries," she repeated, awestruck. "You lived in the Old World." And then she smiled again, bitter and sincere. There was a glint in her eyes as cold as ice; sharp and stark and cynical. "Wasn't that different from this one. That's almost reassuring."

"If I can guess." Arcade coughed, and two pairs of eyes turned on him. "An infection broke out in New York, accidentally or deliberately, that turned people into monsters, is what I'm guessing. Something like rabies, I suppose. And the infectious agent - it wasn't natural, right? Somebody made it on purpose. They must have, if it killed one point five million people in a month. Natural diseases aren't so efficient. I want to say I can't imagine it." A sigh. "But I can. Not on that scale, but - I know someone out there would try it. Did. Did try it."

He nodded at Arcade. "That's not too far from what happened. But the truth is a lot more complicated."

"You were there," Cain said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." Alex admitted, running a hand over his hood. "That's where I lived." A pause. "And where I was made, I guess."

"You were _made_... during an infectious outbreak. At the site. And you're not human. _Were_ you human? Like the Supermutants? Or..." Cain trailed off meaningfully.

Alex sighed. "That's what I meant about things being complicated."

Cain laced her fingers. "_Complicated_ means... I'm going to guess that the disease, whatever it was, did something to you. You caught it or... _somebody_ caught it and they became you. I mean, not knowing the nature of this thing, I can't say. But from here, as you are, you don't look diseased. You don't look like a monster. Not at first glance. So you were unique. Am I right? And _that_ would have made you valuable. Especially to the people who made this thing."

"You're extremely good at this guessing thing." Alex snorted. "I never even had a chance, did I?"

"I don't know if it's how good I am or how good you're _not_. This is what I meant about the poker. I've never met anyone so bad at bluffing. You'd be dead money in a real game."

"Never had any interest in cards." Really, what use were mind games and dissembling to a guy that preferred to settle everything with his tentacles? Alex steepled his fingers, stretching them outwards when he folded his hands. "I'm not sure if I can even tell all of it – the entire thing goes back about forty years before my time, and I never managed to get the whole picture. Lot of conspiracies and hidden projects and shit." He leaned back, thinking. "Okay. It was the year 2009 when everything went down. There was a company, Gentek. Medical research. Biology and genealogy, mostly. And virology. They had a project, Blacklight – an offshoot of something that had been going on for years – where they were building a supervirus, under the guise of a cure for cancer. And one of the scientists working on it was named Alex Mercer."

"I assume that scientist having the same name as you is part of the reason this is 'complicated'," Arcade said. "And that's a funny way of doing medical research. Obviously they had better results than I did in mine."

"Not funny-ha-ha," Cain clarified, faux-helpfully. "Funny-strange."

Alex rolled his eyes. "I'm getting to that. Alex Mercer – the real Mercer, the scientist, the human – was smart. Clinically antisocial and paranoid, but smart. He knew that he was working on something a lot deadlier than they were letting on, but being the asshole he was, he didn't really care about that as long as he was getting paid. But towards the project's close, a lot of the lead scientists started going missing – getting terminated, to tie up loose ends. He figured it out and realized he was next, so he went and did something that I'll never forgive him for."

Alex ground his teeth. "He tried to run away. Set up a false identity, went to vanish off the map. But for insurance, he took a vial of the Blacklight virus with him. And when he took off running, he ended up getting cornered. Turned out Gentek had ties to a military branch, Blackwatch. Top-secret; spec ops, kind of, but _hidden_. Nobody knew about these guys. They dealt with viruses and containment, and they'd been monitoring Project Blacklight every step of the way. So anyway, Mercer's at a terminal – a _very crowded_ terminal, Penn Station's huge – when they surround him. He threatens to break the vial if they don't let him go. They call his bluff and shoot. Except he wasn't bluffing."

All the playful warmth left Cain's expression; her face looked odd and closed without it. Thoughtful.

Arcade scrubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses and then the crown of his head, avoiding Alex's gaze; his hair now stood up in anxious blond spikes. "Dead," he said hoarsely. "Dead rather than a witness. Can't have uncontrolled variables in an experiment. Those idiots - _psychopaths_ -"

"Sounds like Pre-War thinking," Cain said coldly. "Either you win, or everybody loses."

"Yeah." Arcade made a strangled sound that didn't even approach the mirthless laughter he was aiming for. "It would have been a big everybody. Center of transit - Pre-War conditions, hundreds or _thousands_ of people, unaware, unprotected, and an undiluted infectious agent let loose to do its thing. Tied to military, so it's safe to assume it was a biological weapon, made to spread fast. You wouldn't have been able to isolate Patient Zero in the confusion." He frowned. "Unless - "

" - unless Patient Zero was Mercer," Cain put in. "But he was shot, wasn't he? People don't usually survive being shot. I'm a pretty special case."

"He didn't," Alex said shortly. "But as he lay dying, a ton of the virus got into him – he was sprawled right next to the vial, maybe even on top of it. It slipped through his failing immune system and changed him. _Recreated_ him." He sighed. "I woke up in a morgue with a handful of open gunshot wounds in my chest and no memory of who I was."

"It reanimated him?" said Arcade. "I don't know how that's possible."

Cain shrugged. "Pre-War science. But even then - Alex, you talk about _him_ like he's a different person. You're not him, he's not you - is that because you didn't have his memories, or…?"

Arcade shook his head, forestalling speculation. "It could be more complicated. If Doctor Mercer suffered total somatic death... I assume there was no continuity of consciousness. Alex had none of his memories, none of his attitudes, none of his personality; he conceptualizes himself as a different person. Like -" He thought for a moment. "Like, well, some of those old vampire stories. Body walks around, looks alive, but it's not the same person. It's like a flesh suit."

"But what's wearing the suit?" said Cain, looking puzzled.

"Assuming you're _not_ just trying to stretch the metaphor beyond reasonable bounds to annoy me, it was a malevolent spirit. A ghost or a demon. Those old stories were metaphors themselves, though. For – well, disease." Arcade looked at Alex helplessly. "I'm just trying to illustrate an idea. I don't know what actually went on. The science you suggest is… beyond anything I understand."

"Well, I'm not a fucking vampire, I can tell you that," Alex muttered. "But that isn't too far off. I look like Mercer, but I'm not him. I took his name because I _thought_ I was him, and by the time I found out the truth, I didn't really have any other identity to call my own. Not like the original needed it anymore at that point, heh." There was no humor in his laugh. "I'm… well, the best way I could put it is that I'm the virus itself. I've got some of his memories now, and –" He hesitated, thinking about Dana. How _would_ he explain that? "And everyone thought I was him, they had me pegged as a terrorist and the number one threat to the United States. But make no mistake – I wasn't resurrected that night, I was _born."_

"So you're not a vampire, you're a virus in a person suit." Cain's smile was back, looking rueful. "Yep, that's an improvement. I guess that's why you have, you know..." she crooked her fingers and made clawing motions, along with a _rrr_ sound. "The question at hand now is how you managed to hang around for two and a half centuries."

"Viruses are incredibly resilient," said Arcade, sounding distinctly as though he'd given up on anything making sense. "But mostly because they're very simple. There's, uh, still debate about whether they ever count as living things… not that much progress has been made since nuclear Armageddon. I'm more interested in how they contained that outbreak. They managed to retrieve yo- hi- _the_ body, so they must have done something."

"Not too hard to retrieve somebody who's functionally dead," Alex deadpanned. "I woke up with two guys about to vivisect me. They panicked and ran off, and I managed to get out of the facility. Got shot at a few times, didn't die, jumped over a six-foot fence, started running up walls. Crazy shit, but it's kind of hard to worry about those things when you're getting chased by a bunch of spec-ops assholes and you don't even know why." He sighed. "Thus began the longest damn month of my life. …Still the most exciting, though."

"As for the claws…" He looked over to Cain, wondering how much he should say. "That's not all I can do with my arms, but yeah, shapeshifting's part of the package. I picked up some tricks along the way. Had to adapt when Blackwatch was bringing in new shit to kill me on a daily basis. They thought I was behind the outbreak, even though I was fighting against it. I wasn't the only player in the war, though. Like I said, things got complicated."

"Yeah, Alex, this _might_ just be my opinion as a medical researcher, but if there's a self-willed, shapeshifting, viral-based form of life running around looking like a bioterrorist during the outbreak of a biological weapon, calling the situation _complicated_ might be an understatement." Arcade sighed. "And 'exciting' is also definitely not a word I would use. Though she might." He motioned at Cain.

"Just you against the world, with no idea what the world has against you," Cain mused. "I know what that feels like."

Alex leaned back, propping himself against his elbows. "When you've fought against three different armies at once, then we can talk." Not specifically true – part of the reason he'd followed her was because he had recognized that drive, that need for retribution. But he was pretty sure that Cain hadn't learned war like he had.

"Ah, you pedant," said Cain. "It was just one city."

"These armies were who?" Arcade tilted his head. "Blackwatch, I suppose, but who else? Local constabulary? Militia?"

"Well, there was Blackwatch and there were the Marines – the U.S.'s standard armed forces. Got sent in when shit really started to go down. And then there was the Infected. See, uh, a Runner – somebody kind of like me, that Blackwatch had been working on for years – managed to get out of their custody. That's when the virus started spreading uncontrolled." He shook his head. "Tightly packed population center, hemmed in on an island. Tactical nightmare."

"Semper Fidelis," Arcade said dryly. "I suppose they declared a quarantine. There really aren't many ethically palatable ways to control a virulent disease outbreak - you've got people frightened and in denial, doing desperate things. They would have needed a fighting force for that alone."

Alex shrugged. "Manhattan had a natural barrier – all they needed to do was cordon off the bridges. As for the quarantine, that was as much in place to keep _me_ from getting off the island as it was to keep the rest of the infection."

"What made this Runner different from you?" Cain asked curiously.

"Different strain." Alex folded his hands. "Redlight, not Blacklight. It was an older virus, not genetically engineered like I was – but it was a hell of a lot better at infecting people and keeping them alive, turning them into mindless drones for the hive queen. Blacklight's not so good at that; it just kills. Straight and to the point." He chuckled blackly. "I can accept that. Greene – that was her name, Elizabeth Greene – couldn't change shape like I can, but she was just as strong, and she was commanding her own personal army."

Cain frowned. "She was a prisoner?"

"Yeah. She was a victim of one of their earlier experiments. Nineteen sixty-nine; wiped a whole town off the map. She was just a teenager at the time, too. Everyone died, except for her – they took her kid from her and then locked her up for experiments for forty years. I'd have felt sorry for her, but she was completely out of her mind. Putting her down was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time."

"If I may say, the idea of someone with your abilities but not your gentle and forgiving nature frightens the life out of me," Arcade said.

Alex squinted at him suspiciously, not sure what to make of that.

Arcade ducked his head, sheepish. "Just an observation."

"Not a very polite one," said Cain.

"I'm a doctor. I'm familiar with the distinction between honesty and politeness. Anyway, the thought occurred to you too, don't deny it."

"Actually," said Cain, with infinite dignity, "_I_ was thinking that Blackwatch would not have been happy that someone put down their special subject." She transferred her gaze to Alex. "Unique equals valuable. Once she was gone, only you were left."

"You're telling me." Alex gritted his teeth. "When she died, they basically threw up their hands and said 'fuck it' to the whole operation. The Infection was headless without her, dying off, and there were still well over a million people alive on the island. But no, without their HVT, they didn't give a shit. Decided to glass the city. That's around when I realized I wasn't Alex Mercer and I was just wearing his skin around like a costume, but at that point, it didn't really matter. Only thing left to do was clean up the mess he made." His eyes flashed. "And I didn't agree with Blackwatch's methods."

"Glass?" asked Cain.

"Nuke," Arcade clarified. "I suspect. The term originates from the way intense heat will melt down the minerals in dirt, leaving behind a substance called vitrified glass. It's caused by three things that I know of and since I doubt somewhat these men had access to lightning or meteor strikes on demand, that just leaves a nuclear detonation. First observed a couple of states southeast of here a heck of a long time ago."

Cain stared at him. He shifted nervously. "It keeps me off the streets, okay?"

"Right," said Cain. "So Blackwatch figured nukes would fix everything. Pre-War thinkers through and through."

"Blackwatch was pretty big on cauterizing their messes, but back when I was around, the world as a whole was pretty good at the whole nuclear stalemate 'just don't do it' thing." Alex frowned. "Guessing that changed."

"Why, what gave you_ that_ idea?"

"Just a hunch." Alex rolled his eyes at Cain. "I took their nuke and flew it over the bay. Almost killed me, but, you know," and he shrugged, "_almost_ doesn't mean jack shit. In the end, you either do or you don't. End of the day, I'm still here, they're not." He scowled. "At least, I'm pretty sure they're not."

Cain shrugged. "Secret government bullshit requires pre-existing government bullshit, and that went out of fashion when the bombs dropped. All that's left are the Vaults. And most of the Vault dwellers I've met - I mean, the ones that aren't plant monsters - are just agoraphobic and really intent on wearing hats. A little weird, but not all that threatening."

Arcade cleared his throat. "You know, Cain, I thought you were a Vault dweller when we first met."

"Because of the Pip-Boy, right?" Cain smiled and tapped the gauntlet on her left wrist with a fingernail. "I got it from the doc who glued my head back together. Even better than a follow-up exam."

Alex tilted his head, eyeing the device. It was a handy thing, he supposed – the inbuilt map alone was incredibly useful, although he was pretty sure an iPhone and an internet connection would have blown its functionality out of the water. Except for the Geiger counter, maybe.

It wasn't something he could use, though. The first time he transformed his arms, the thing would break like a toy. He didn't handle worn objects too well. Hell, even his 'clothes' were merely an extension of his skin.

"I shouldn't be surprised you survived a nuclear blast," Arcade said to Alex, causing the latter to look up. "You would have had to learn if you're still around now."

Alex shifted against the wall. "Well, I wasn't here for the big light show, if that's what you're asking."

"That, um, wasn't what I was asking," Arcade said, blinking. "That was what I assumed. But now you've made me curious."

"Don't know what happened," Alex said, quite honestly. "After Manhattan, I went off the map for a few years. Just… living, keeping ahead of Blackwatch, avoiding the law, stuff like that." _Keeping Dana safe_, but he had little reason to mention that, and something in him balked at bringing it up. "Official word was that I was dead, and I wanted to keep it that way. Blackwatch knew better, but at least the public eye was off Alex Mercer, the country's number one terrorist."

"But then…" The virus frowned. "I don't know. My memory stops at 2014. Maybe halfway through the year, little farther. Can't pin where it all ends." A long pause. "I think… I think I remember burning. Feeling like I was on fire. Maybe I was." He shrugged. "Guessing Blackwatch finally caught up to me. Only thing I can think of. But I can't remember how. After that? Woke up and found that it's a few centuries in the future, and the world went and committed suicide somewhere along the way."

He rubbed his eyes, feeling oddly tired. "Still a little hard to accept it."

"That's roughly sixty-three years before we shot ourselves in the foot," Cain said, after a moment's thought. "You missed out on the war with the Chinese."

"You missed out on more than that," said Arcade. "What you've said makes a lot more sense now. No wonder you went with _amnesia_ to explain it - the world changed almost beyond recognition for somebody from your time."

"Do you have any idea how you were preserved? What kept you… unconscious, or in stasis, or comatose, or whatever? Pre-War government had this nasty habit of leaving dangerous shit around, but they tend to lock the door, at least." Cain paused. "Not that would have made much difference to you, I guess."

Alex rubbed his head and wondered if he should be insulted at the 'dangerous shit' comment. It was true enough, he decided. "I woke up… somewhere underground. Only about a week ago; week and a half, maybe. My memory's sketchy on it – felt like shit the whole time, could hardly walk straight. But I didn't have any trouble actually getting out of the place." He frowned. "But I don't know how I got there, or what they did to keep me sedated. Hell, I don't know how they got me in the first place."

He paused for a few moments. "I guess it makes sense that I'm still alive, though. Heh. Always wondered if old age would mean anything for me. Guess not."

"Confusion is natural when coming out of heavy sedation," Arcade pointed out. "After two and a half centuries of it, you're entitled to a little loss of basic motor function. A normal human being would have atrophied down to nothing. If you're suffered _any_ atrophy, I'd say it was in social skills."

"If you had any to begin with," said Cain brightly. "Ghouls and Supermutants have that kind of lifespan - and Mr. House, by some accounts. I don't know what _his_ deal is, if he really is still alive, but the rest are pretty heavily mutated."

"Thing is," said Arcade, looking thoughtful, "the Supermutants aren't products of the bombs. They're people who suffered FEV exposure in Pre-War labs. They were destroyed, but - "

He stopped. Cain had started smiling. "Cain, doctor's orders are to forget anything I said in the past five minutes."

"Too late, Doc!" She was smiling at _Alex _now. "Hey, you think you could try and recall where you first woke up?"

Alex frowned and closed his eyes. He _tried_, he really did, but all he could get was a dizzy impression of metal walls and stumbling, and it was giving him a headache. The whole incident felt like a solid weight in the back of his mind, and whatever served as his brain started buzzing like a hive of hornets whenever he got too close.

And then he flinched at the sudden rush of light and sound-

Metal halls, metal doors that he'd seen before – a vault, no, _Vault 20_, he knew the name. Or the person in his skull knew the name, and he had a name too… David Mordin. A Vault dweller; this man had lived his whole life without seeing the sun. Holotapes, videos, a vague wonder of what it was like. A door, sealed, an echo of a mechanical voice – "You don't want to go outside! Radiation levels are deemed HIGH." Alex felt as though he'd heard that before too, somehow… but Mordin's memories were stronger than his own right now. The monorail terminal was lost in a flurry of pictures; a ball game, a glimpse of a woman, a nervous first date, a lover's face, a double shift in the control room, a promise of some kind of surprise…

Then things fragmented. The memories lost whatever amount of cogence they had, and Mordin's recollections flashed to other perspectives, ones he didn't know; too quick and confused for him to grasp even a name from the scattered images. As other memories pressed in against the ones he was trying to follow, the images fell apart like shattered glass.

He shook his head as the flashback trailed away and the pounding headache receded. Vault 20…? Had that been the name of the place he'd woken up in? His recollection of it was fuzzy, but it _had_ seemed like a vault in retrospect. And that would have made his lingering sense of _déjà vu _in Vault 22 make a lot more sense.

But the flashback itself posed a greater question. David Mordin wasn't one of Freeside's thugs that he'd hunted, and he definitely hadn't lived in the old world, the world he knew – when had he consumed him? If Vault 20 _was_ the same place he'd woken up in, it had been deserted when he left. And the way it had fallen apart was strange. His brain liked to piece together memories in the most annoying, schizoid way possible, but the way Mordin's stream of consciousness had ended had felt like it was blocked off by _other_ memories. Like his head had somehow connected from Mordin to several other people at the same time and given up. What did that mean?

Too many goddamn questions… and he didn't know enough to answer them. The two people sitting across from him might have had more insight… if he wanted to explain to them just _how_ he acquired all the memories floating around in his head, and the whole eating people topic wasn't one he wanted to broach.

He opened his eyes. Cain was looking at him expectantly.

"I think… I think it was a Vault," he said slowly, not sure how much to say. "But there was nobody down there."

"It was probably automated. Maybe robots. Vaults were designed to be self-sufficient communities run by an Overseer until they opened, usually, but there were exceptions." Arcade squinted behind his glasses, as though trying to retrieve an old memory. "I mean, we got agricultural experiments here in 22, and I, uh, heard a rumor there was a Vault where every inhabitant lived a life of... indolence, really. All the maintenance was taken care of by robots. Others with cloning labs, some with advanced computer equipment or enormous weapon stockpiles, several with very few inhabitants at all."

"Or," said Cain, "there may have been some sort of breakdown or exodus. I've found Vaults deserted before; sometimes the equipment in them keeps running itself just fine even though everyone's gone." Then she grinned. "There's one way to find out."

"I guess." Alex shrugged. "But I don't really know where it is. There was nothing but open desert for a while. I covered a lot of ground before I hit Freeside."

She gave him a long, hard look. "Well, keep it in mind," she said at last. "If anything jogs your memory, let me know - you could learn what brought you here."

"Will do." Alex stretched and stepped away from the wall. "Is that all?"

Arcade frowned. "I'm a little curious on what you _are_, exactly. I know you said you were a virus, but medically speaking, that makes very little sense."

"It's not that simple. I'm not actually a virus, but that's what I was originally created to be. I wasn't supposed to be… sentient. I wasn't supposed to be a person. Happy accident, I guess. Not that anyone was particularly happy about it. I'm more like… a construct of the virus, I guess. But I'm not human; never was."

Arcade nodded, looking thoughtful.

"I suppose this is the part where you're going to run away screaming," Alex suggested sourly after a moment's pause. "Maybe fire some rounds at center mass while finding new and creative ways to imply that I'm a demonic hellspawn that has no right to exist, et cetera?"

"Aw, don't be like that." Alex blanched when Cain suddenly slung an arm around him and leaned on his shoulder. He tried and failed to edge away from the woman that was currently achieving a level of physical closeness generally reserved for people he was moments from consuming. "I once met a guy who could light up a room, and it wasn't anything to do with his disposition. I helped him take a rocket to the moon. Literally. There was a rocket, and he flew in it, to the moon. With his pals. They had space suits. In short, I've gotten weirder things than you as souvenirs, man. Don't be so nervous. We're all friends here, right?"

…Friends? That was not the word Alex would have used. A quick look over at Arcade's equally bemused expression gave him the impression that despite his limited success with understanding such nebulous concepts as 'friendship', his initial impression was probably correct.

He ducked out from under her arm, ignoring her cry of protest when she fell without his support.

She got back up, pouting.

"Maybe a touch too early," Arcade quipped.

"_Well_," Cain said pointedly, with a glance up at the sky; the last traces of sunset glowed faintly on the horizon. "That _was_ a long story. Not that I'm, uh, complaining, but we might want to call it a night. Unless anyone particularly wants to cover a bit more ground before packing in?"

Arcade didn't and Alex didn't care either way, so they set about turning their makeshift sitting area into a camp for the night. Cain gathered a few pieces of old boards and some straggling greenery into a circle, then pulled out an abused-looking lighter and lit the pile. The leaves smoldered and smoked for a while, but they helped the fire catch onto the slower-burning wood before they were finally spent.

When Cain was satisfied with the fire, she pulled a few metal rods out of her largest pack and fashioned together a makeshift spit over the fire. "Don't have any fresh meat," she apologized, "but I do have some honey mesquite we can roast."

"Not for anything, but that's not much of a meal," Arcade said, somewhat apprehensively.

"I have some Brahmin jerky too," she assured him, skewering the pods. "Not much left, and I'm going to need to restock soon." She perched the skewer atop her spit and leaned back. "That'll only take a few minutes. Anyone got any stories? Well, I think Alex has filled his quota for the day." She gave the hooded man a cheeky grin, getting a blank stare in return. "Well? Arcade?"

"I've got nothing on Pre-War conspiracies and superhuman powers, I assure you," the doctor said dryly. Cain gave him a look. "Why don't I do something useful with our time instead? I've been meaning to give you a check-up."

Cain shifted, swinging her legs to her side. "Is this about Vault 22?"

Arcade nodded. "The spores in there clearly infected the vault's original inhabitants – chances are, they were still active when we went down there. I don't know what to expect, or how infectious it is, but it's best to err on the side of caution. I've already checked myself; I'm relatively confident I'm safe, inasmuch as I can be while working with a disease I know next to nothing about."

"All right, Doc. Do what you have to."

"It's nothing intrusive," he assured her. "I just need you to do some breathing exercises for me. I'll be listening for any blockages in your lungs. I've got some antibiotics that might help if you do, although I'd like to save them if possible. They're hard to find."

He listened intently as Cain took several measured deep breaths. After a little while, he took out a stethoscope and placed that on her chest as she breathed.

"Your airways sound clear enough," he finally said, removing the stethoscope. Your breathing is a bit on the shallow side, but that's just as likely to be a separate condition."

"Probably the smoking," she said, unconcerned. "So am I clear?"

Arcade hesitated. "I can't be certain – this isn't something I've ever worked with before. I'm not familiar with how long it takes for symptoms to start showing, but if you don't have a cough by tomorrow, I'll let it drop. In the meantime, the fresh air should do us all some good."

"Got it, Doc."

He cleared his throat awkwardly. "So, Alex, if you could come over here…?"

Alex didn't even look at him. "No need."

"I assure you," Arcade demanded, a touch tetchily, "that checking to make sure you haven't contracted a serious and deadly disease from the monster-infested vault we just trekked through is anything but needless. Prevention saves lives."

Alex did turn this time, a distinctly unamused look clear on his face. "I'm clean. Trust me."

Arcade started to protest, but Cain cut him off. "Guy's got a point, you know," she noted. "If he's a walking virus, I mean… how would that even work?" She paused, looking thoughtful. "_Do_ you know how it works?"

"Yeah. That's not really accurate, but for simplicity's sake, I'll go with it," came the gravelly reply. "I _can_ be infected, but Blacklight's pretty damn resilient. You'd need something that was specifically built to hurt it. Probably. In any case, I'd know if there was something wrong with me, and there isn't. My body doesn't work like yours," he added, when Arcade tried to say something. "Just trust me on it. I don't need a doctor."

"Then what was that stunt back in Freeside? Posturing?"

Alex sighed. "No, that was radiation poisoning. Or something like it. However that works. It's not something I'd ever dealt with before, so I didn't have any resistance to it."

Arcade frowned. "How did you even get that bad of a case? You were in a pretty sorry state, abnormal biology or not."

"I have no idea," Alex lied. "I was wandering around for a while before I got to Freeside, though. Could have been anything."

"Well, for future reference, you may want to avoid trenches full of glowing, irradiated waste, since I'm going to assume you were taking a bath in one before you came to Freeside."

"Food's ready," Cain called, cutting off any retort Alex might have been working on. She delicately slid the pods off the skewer and into a pan, fingers deftly avoiding the hot metal. She pulled out some dried jerky from her pack as well, divvying it up into three equal rations. However, when she went to offer Alex his share, the man pushed it back to her.

"Come on, it's not poisonous, I swear," she cajoled. "Maybe mildly irradiated, but not any more than everything else!"

Alex shifted uncomfortably. "I don't really eat."

"You don't… eat." Cain gave him a very shrewd look.

"Not like you do, no."

"Somehow, I'm not all that surprised," Arcade commented. "Not after everything we've heard today."

Cain made a face. "I guess not," she decided, pulling back his untouched share to re-wrap it. "But you really don't eat? Not even a little?"

Alex shook his head. "Tends not to go down well." His feeder tendrils had no idea what to do with dead meat, much less plants or processed foods – Dana had put him through all kinds of hell in the name of 'family bonding'. Not that he would have given it up for anything in the world.

"Well, if the Old World's food didn't sit well with you, I doubt that you'll have much luck with what goes around now." Arcade sighed and took a bite of his jerky, worrying at it with his teeth until he finally pulled a piece free. "Ah, that good old wasteland flavor. Not that Freeside offers much better, mind."

"I'm actually a pretty good cook," Cain said through a mouthful of jerky. "Just don't have the freshest ingredients right now. Can't have gecko kabobs every night when you're on the move." She lifted a hand, pointing imperiously to the doctor. "But you'll see!"

"I'll hold you to it," Arcade said dryly.

The stars were out by the time the two finished their meal, with the third looking on awkwardly. Then things turned to idle chatter for a time – Alex sat back and said little. He'd talked enough for the day, and Cain seemed to be content to avoid prompting him for once. He sat back and listened in for any useful tidbits, watching the flames flicker and die down. They warmed their hands over the fire - for all the blazing heat during the day, the desert did get cool at night.

Alex only noticed Arcade speaking to him when he caught the latter turning in the corner of his vision. The doctor was frowning at him, which couldn't mean anything good. "You know, I've been thinking. None of what you said really explains why you took off running like a pack of Deathclaws were after you in the middle of that one conversation. I mean, yes, finding out the year had to be a shock, but that didn't seem like a normal reaction." He coughed delicately. "Even for what I can make of your standards."

Alex swallowed. There was really no harm in telling them, but it didn't change the fact that he didn't want to. "I… had a sister back then. Not like I am. Human. I… She's gone now."

Arcade's mouth formed a little 'o' of realization.

Cain blinked, then took on a conflicted expression – curiosity, sympathy, and calculation at war over her face. Then she sighed. "Guess loss always finds us, whoever we are. I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago," Alex muttered, not meeting her eyes. "I just… I hope she had a good life." Maybe – maybe she had been _better_ off without him, without harboring the country's most wanted terrorist under her roof, without having such a dangerous creature looming over her at all times of the day. He loved her, far more than the original Alex Mercer ever had, but his presence alone had brought all kinds of danger into her life, dangers she never should have had to face. With him gone… maybe she'd have been able to live a normal life. It hurt, but he could live with that.

"If you don't mind me asking, what was her name?"

"…Dana." Alex looked up. "She was a good person. Not like me. I… I really don't want to talk about this."

"Okay. I'm sorry for prying." Alex raised an eyebrow at her; she gave him a genuine smile in return. "But if you ever want to talk about it, I'm ears."

"Yeah." Alex snorted. Not likely. "Whatever."

There was another long and awkward silence, broken when Cain yawned widely. "I'm going to pack in for the night," she announced. "You might want to, too – we've got a lot of distance to travel tomorrow. Alex, there's another bedroll in my pack if you want it."

Alex inclined his head, but made no move to retrieve it. She waited a few seconds more before giving up on the prompt. "Well, good night. Don't let the Deathclaws bite. And if they do, aim for the eyes. That staggers 'em."

Arcade chuckled nervously and glanced around the open path. "Does that, ah, happen regularly? Because you forgot to mention that when you sold me on this gig."

"Nah." Cain shrugged. "I just heard someone say that once. Really, though, if a Deathclaw shows up while you were asleep, you've got a pretty nasty hand."

"What's a Deathclaw?" Alex felt compelled to ask. The word had been coming up a lot lately.

"Big, angry lizard." Cain yawned again. "Nasty claws, hence the name. Not something you want to mess with. Or wake up to find standing over your bed."

"Great image to go to sleep on," the doctor commented, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Alex watched as Cain snuggled into her bedroll, pulling her padded coat over her like a blanket. Arcade shifted from side to side, looking far less comfortable under the open sky, but eventually his breathing slowed to an even, deep rhythm to match Cain's, leaving Alex the only one awake.

_They knew_. Somehow, the realization that he'd spilled his secrets – to people that he barely knew, no less – was curiously apathetic. He had been expecting frantic self-rebuttals and cursing himself for being so stupidly open, or maybe a sense of freedom. He felt neither; just a curiously dead sense of acceptance. It hadn't gone over too badly, he supposed, but it changed little. They might have had the story – or enough of it to count – but neither of them had seen how truly monstrous he could be. And when that happened, this little partnership was over.

So no – he could neither rebuke himself for something that had gone over better than he could have expected, nor delude himself with the false belief that he was free to act himself.

Perhaps Cain and Arcade could accept his origins, and even his abilities. Why wouldn't they, when they had never lived through a nightmare in Manhattan where monsters roamed freely and the greatest, most terrible of them all stalked the rooftops, tearing through thousands? Why wouldn't they, in a world where he apparently wasn't the only superhuman creature to wander the land? Why wouldn't they, when they had never had the fear of Zeus branded into their hearts, when they could look at his powers and see only opportunity?

But once they knew of his hunger, of the instincts that clawed at his gut and hissed to him that he should kill them and take them even now, consume them as they slept unawares… they would leave. That was the part that ruined him, that slashed all but the most sacred of ties and left him standing an insurmountable distance from humanity.

It was the reason why Karen had betrayed him, after all.

Alex closed his eyes, and the ghosts in his head raged under another dark and starry sky.

* * *

[Achievement Unlocked! **…And Here I Am Now **(5 pts)_–You managed to explain your sordid past to your companions without getting shot at once. Well done!_]


	12. Camp McCarran

They arrived at Camp McCarran around mid-afternoon, after a long day of bickering, bantering, and Alex being the perpetually grumpy bastard he was.

Cain squinted. Alex; now _there_ was one hell of a story. Really strong, really angry, really _really_ old but didn't look it. Also kind of a dick, but least he was sort of reasonable instead of being one of the 'jump at you and eat your face' kinds of mutants. She'd encountered her fair share of those… but she still had her face, and that was good. He didn't eat, and she suspected he didn't sleep either – yet running on neither, the guy still had no problem with lifting up a fucking _Vault door_ like it was a suitcase. Pre-War science was a hell of a trip.

It wasn't what she expected, but she could go with it – honestly, he wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever seen. What remained was what she would do with what she'd learned. Could he be trusted? He hadn't been willing to share his past until he'd been pressed into a corner; there was no mutual trust there. At the same time, he was following her readily, and that was another problem. He'd shown himself to be very aggressive and prone to bouts of rage. Could she safely ditch him if his sanity proved to be even more tenuous than she thought? Kill him, even, if the need arose?

She hoped it wouldn't come to that, and _that_ was only partly out of fear. She genuinely felt sorry for Alex. The guy really was alone, a thousand miles and a couple centuries from everything he knew. And for all his standoffishness, Alex struck her as the type that could easily get taken advantage of. All that power and no direction, no purpose. Learning that he had a dead sister had explained a lot, too. All living things craved validation, affection, belonging. For as distant as Alex was - and likely to deny it - he was no different. Little wonder he'd latched onto the first offer of companionship he'd gotten. Now… she just had to see where it led them.

Probably nowhere good, but there was one thing she was absolutely sure of. Having a living, breathing Pre-War weapon was one hell of an edge in a fight.

McCarran was the same as ever – big concrete walls surrounding a wide yard of military endeavors. The guards at the gate nodded curtly as they passed through.

"You have to hand it to the NCR," Arcade said. "Get enough hands working together and they can make or break just about anything."

Cain snuck a glance at the doctor. There'd been some hidden emotion in that, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. Bitterness, maybe? The Followers of the Apocalypse had never gotten along well with the NCR – a damn shame too, since she'd have picked the Followers over the NCR any day.

They passed through the front of the camp without incident, Cain leading the group around the trucks and tents to the terminal building. She snuck quick glances behind her, keeping tabs on her companions. She knew Alex didn't like being watched, and the guy was tense enough without being stared down by an entire camp full of soldiers. She wanted a moment's notice if he snapped and went berserk, although she wasn't sure exactly _what_ she'd do if that came to pass.

Alex was edgy; she could see it in the way he carried himself. Cain was expecting that, given Alex's past with a military – although how different things would have been two and a half centuries ago, she had no idea. He was restraining himself, though, and that was a relief. What surprised her was that _Arcade_ seemed nervous as well. He did a better job hiding it – Alex looked like a wild animal in human skin sometimes (and apparently that might not even be too far off the mark, what the hell was her life) – but she could see Arcade's gaze flickering between soldiers' weapons with a little too much intensity and caught him fidgeting with his hands a couple of time. A history with them, perhaps?

She was well aware that Arcade had his own secrets – someone so persistently telling you they're _boring_ must have something to hide. But Arcade was less resentful to the world, more fearful; probably of being found out. Obviously, it was a matter of something in his past and not something he _was_, unlike Alex's case. He had his secrets, but she was pretty damn sure that Arcade was a normal human.

…and if not, it _still_ wouldn't be the weirdest thing to ever happen to her.

0o0o0

The inside of the terminal building was dimly lit. Alex toyed around with his eyes for a moment to increase the light intake – then blinked in surprise once things were clear. The front room was decorated with a barricade of sandbags and… two rows of slot machines. Wasn't this a terminal? 'Casino' and 'airport hub' were mutually exclusive concepts, as far as he knew. Penn Station had been a hell of a lot more straightforward than this – and the only gamble anyone had ever taken in it had ended in the indirect death of millions. He tried to puzzle it out for a few hapless moments before resigning himself to the best answer his memories could provide. _Vegas._

The relief at being indoors and out of sight lasted for a grand total of maybe five seconds before he noticed the soldier at the reception desk. And then the one walking out of a room. And the one over to the side. And the two snipers on the balcony. Well, fuck. Couldn't expect anything less.

He knew that the soldiers were just doing their job, keeping tabs on the outsiders in their midst. But having so many eyes on him was agitating him. His biomass was practically bristling, and unless he wanted to cause a panic that would probably end with a bunch of dead people and another army on his ass, he couldn't do anything about it.

…Mmm. That sounded good right now. He'd burned off a fair bit of biomass in the explosion down in Vault 22. These soldiers all looked the same – who would miss one? They always filled in the gaps he chewed in their ranks. He just had to make an excuse, vanish for a minute, and his companions would be none the wiser…

_No._ He gritted his teeth. Those were bad thoughts, monster thoughts. These soldiers were military, but they weren't his enemy, not yet. They'd done nothing wrong and nothing against him, nothing to deserve getting preyed upon. Hell, according to Arcade, they might be the only thing keeping order around these parts. He was hungry, but he wasn't in desperate shape.

He wasn't an animal. He'd promised her that.

He just had to get a grip and keep his eyes open. There'd be other opportunities later, ones that didn't involve breaking the most important vow he'd ever made.

…Would there be? He had no doubt he'd be getting a fair share of fights, but just how many of them would give him an opportunity to feed? Companionship was… nice, he supposed. More tolerable than he'd expected, and there was _something_ to it, or he'd have split already. But it didn't leave him with a lot of privacy, and he'd already seen just how much of a cramp that put in his methods. Maybe the claws, the weapons, were out of the way, but those were a novelty in comparison to his less palatable quirks. He didn't want them to see him for what he was any more than he'd wanted Dana to – and in this case, there was no familial bond, no mutual empathy to try and heal over that deep scar in their relationship.

But Cain was moving, and action was always more useful than brooding. He and Arcade followed as she led them across the first floor and past a series of doors. A slight jut from the main corridor ended in an open room, one more brightly lit than the rest and covered in gauges and various beakers of chemical mixtures. A curly-haired woman was standing in the corner, fiddling with the dials on a wall-mounted machine.

Cain headed past her and to the side of the room, into an office of sorts. He followed, giving the scientific implements a wary glance as he passed. There was a man sitting at a terminal in this new room – one with clean-cut hair, a neatly pressed lab uniform, an immaculate tie, and cold grey eyes. Alex immediately hated him.

"Ah," he said, by way of greeting. "You've returned. Excellent. I expect you have news of Vault 22 for me?"

"I do," said Cain. "We explored the vault and found the mainframe at the bottom. We also found various logs from other mercenaries that had been down there. Do you know anything about them?"

"No. Why should I? I'm certain many others have tried to plumb its depths in the past."

Cain's eyes sharpened. "That's funny. A lot of them mentioned being employed by _you_. That seems like the sort of thing that would have been handy to know before negotiating the terms for this job."

Hildern coughed. "It was unnecessary information at the time."

"More like unnecessary expenses," she corrected pointedly.

"I can arrange a slight raise from our original terms," Hildern said smoothly. "Once you've returned the data to me, of course."

"Ah, well, there's a bit of a problem with that," Cain said, shooting Alex a quick glare. He narrowed his eyes back, daring her to challenge their decision.

Hildern's clinically pleasant demeanor darkened in an instant. "What… _kind_ of problem?" he began coldly.

"Well." If Cain was nervous, she didn't show it. "The vault had some pretty incredible stuff in it. Your informants were not kidding about the contents. Plants everywhere, growing in places they shouldn't have been. But, um, your informants might not have gone deep enough.

"In the lower parts of the vault, we found some plants that weren't too happy to see us. By that, I meant they tried to bite our faces off. And it turns out that they were human once. The vault was based on agricultural research, but they were a little too successful. They created plants that could grow anywhere… including inside the human body, which _probably_ wasn't intentional. The vault's original inhabitants died from a disease they accidentally made, and the whole place was filled with its spores. Any of those plants could have been producing them, too." She frowned thoughtfully. "My money was on the giant ones that kept spitting poison at us, but I guess it could have been any of them.

"So we might have just… destroyed the data. A little."

Hildern took a deep breath, which he exhaled slowly through his nose. "You destroyed the data."

"Um. Yes. And set all the samples on fire. …And in doing so, we protected the NCR's citizens from a potentially deadly threat! Which is probably worth a few caps," she added meaningfully.

The researcher was not buying it. "You _destroyed_. The _data_."

"I was hoping we could move past that part," Cain coaxed.

"You _imbecile!"_ he roared. "This was to be my – to be an incredible breakthrough! Something that would revolutionize the NCR's current system and usher in a new age of prosperity! And you're telling me that you've not only failed to complete the job I set out for you, but you've also nullified any chance of anyone else completing it?"

"Hey now, that's not a fair way of looking at it. The way I see it, I just did you all a public service. You don't even need to hire an exterminator."

Alex was no expert at reading people, but even he could tell that Cain wasn't exactly endearing herself to her would-be-employer. Not that he cared about that, by this point. He growled quietly as he listened to the back-and-forth between them. He wasn't surprised that Hildern didn't give a shit about the vault's disease, but knowing that the world had those Gentek-types in abundance even after it had blown itself up just made him angrier.

"An exterminator is the last thing I'd want to hire! What _possessed_ you to ruin those records?"

"Did you miss the part about the infectious disease that turned all of the vault dwellers into plant zombies?" Cain was starting to lose her temper. "Which, may I add, killed all of the previous explorers you sent down there? You know, the ones you conveniently forgot to tell me about?"

"A few pests mean nothing compared to the number of people this could have fed!" Hildern gestured harshly, as if brushing away an invisible fly. "You saw for yourself that the vault was miraculous – and now it's lost to us forever!"

"Well, technically, that's his fault," she snipped, jerking a thumb over at Alex. "But really, if you're such a genius, I'm_ sure_ you can find your own way to kick-start agriculture."

Hildern turned to start on him, but one look into those murderous eyes was all it took to make him close his mouth, and he hastily went back to Cain.

"Regardless, it was still the actions of somebody under your employ, so the fault is yours. I paid you to retrieve the data, and you've failed. More than failed – you've ruined this project! How you can expect any recompense after strangling any chance of this venture yielding fruit is beyond me. That you have the gall to _justify_ it-"

"Fruit? That data was creating monsters," Alex growled. He was getting sick of this argument, and he honestly wasn't sure how much longer he could listen to the bastard talk without tearing his head from his shoulders. "It was dangerous. Too dangerous. Get your fucking plants somewhere else."

Hildern clapped his hands against the table. "I'd hardly expect the common rabble like yourself to understand the sheer importance of those findings, but to destroy them? The utter _ignorance_ you've just displayed is –"

A low, rumbling sound gradually rose above the background hum of machinery – anyone who knew Alex at all would have realized the fact that he was openly _snarling_ at Doctor Hildern meant that things were about to get bloody in short order. As it was, Cain did know well enough to guess, and she gave his arm an insistent tug. True, she didn't have a prayer of actually pulling him anywhere he didn't want to be, but after a moment's hesitation, he deferred and backed off, still glaring daggers at the noticeably unnerved doctor.

A long silence followed that. "Hmph," Hildern finally sniffed, "I suppose your lack of civility is only to be expected. After all, only a _barbarian_ would have thought defacing such precious data was the right course of action."

Alex tensed again, subconsciously leaning forward as fists that could smash through steel balled at his sides. Cain saw this and jabbed at his arm again, making frantic 'shut up' motions with her hands. "Yes, yes, Alex gets a little _overenthusiastic_ sometimes," she cut in quickly, shooting him a pointed look. "He means well, but _sometimes he doesn't know when to listen to me and back off._"

Alex bristled. "I'm not your fucking _subordinate_-"

"-Like _right now, _because it'd be _really nice_ if he could_ shut up _and _take a hint-"_

Hildern was not impressed. "If you're done with the circus act, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Cain drew herself up. "_Well,_" she said, cradling what remained of her dignity, "I guess our business here is finished."

"Indeed. Get out. And I never want to see you in my office again."

To emphasize his point, he slammed the door behind them as soon as they were over the threshold, leaving a disgruntled courier, an exasperated doctor, and a seething viral monster to work out their differences.

"Well, that was a refreshing talk," Arcade sighed. "Doctor Hildern is a charming example of what happens once you remove a researcher's ability to see the true scope of his actions. Once the teeming mass of individuals involved becomes a mere statistic."

"Good thing we still have people like you around," Cain commented.

"Well, uh… thank you." The doctor sounded halfway between nonplussed and gratified by that. "Still, all I've ever done is small-time research. Nothing that's actually amounted to anything. Or will amount to anything, for that matter. It's just a shame when the people heading the important jobs end up like… well, that. There's a reason that the Followers and the NCR don't get along – their tolerance of attitudes like Hildern's in the higher echelons is a considerable part of it."

"He was a complete asshole," Alex growled, fingers clenched. "I know his type. The whole world can burn, as long as they get paid on time."

Cain frowned, watching him closely. Were those tentacles flickering up and down his arms? Eesh. He was _really_ pissed. "Maybe," she replied, deciding to let her issues lie until he'd cooled down. "My guess was that he was trying to impress some of the higher-ups. He seemed like a guy with something to prove."

Alex shrugged. "No difference to me. If you weren't there…"

"Yes, and on that note." Arcade turned to stare at Alex. "I'm aware we were just talking to one of the lowest moral examples of humanity you can find west of Arizona, but I would advise trying to act human in the middle of a military base."

Alex blinked. He hadn't considered it as a _base_. The uniforms were brown, not black, and the train terminal was nothing like the stylized Blackwatch bases he had known, but through that lens… Suddenly, wearing his own skin made him feel naked. Exposed.

"Let's just get out of here," he muttered.

"But the caps!" Cain complained.

"I can kill him and take the money if you want it so badly," Alex offered. At his companions' incredulous stares, he shuffled uncomfortably. "What? Was it something I said?"

"Uh, I don't think that would go over very well in the middle of an NCR base," Arcade finally said. "I'm going to ignore the rest of the moral connotations of what you just said and hope it never happens again."

Alex frowned, mildly taken aback. He really didn't see the problem. Dr. Hildern had proved himself a complete asshole, and he was pretty sure that all three of them agreed that the world would be better off without him – even if the other two didn't have quite the same vehement experience as he did. And he was an obstacle standing between Cain and something she wanted. Dana would have been uncomfortable with him saying something like that out in the open, true, but she had never been a fighter. Cain was used to death, surely – what was the problem here?

"We could… steal the caps?" he tried again.

Arcade looked at the ceiling. "How in the world did I agree to travel with you people?" he lamented.

"Actually, normally, I'd say that's a great idea. Um, the stealing, not the killing." Cain frowned. "It'd be a nice parting '_fuck you'_. But this really is not the best place to start things. Too crowded, and they might have working cameras here. I'm kind of enjoying not being on the run. Well, until I got shot in the head."

"And I might suggest you keep your voices down," Arcade hissed. "We aren't alone in here."

Alex turned. He'd completely forgotten about the woman from before, who was watching them bicker with a visibly disturbed expression. Being overheard had never really been a concern of his, largely because he rarely _talked_ – but he supposed it was like getting spotted when he was trying to go incognito, if context meant anything.

"Oh, uh, hi!" Cain said, all bright and genial in a heartbeat. "My name's Cain. I'm a Courier. Pleased to meet you!" She held out a hand.

The woman cautiously came forward to shake it. "Angela Williams. I'm the head researcher here at the facility." Her voice had a Southern twang that stood at odds with her lab suit. "Uh, if I may," she began hesitantly, eyeing Alex with the same kind of wariness one might employ when finding a Deathclaw hiding under their desk, "were you the team that came back from Vault 22?"

"Yep! Really, don't mind these two. They're just a little put off with the good doctor right now."

The woman didn't seem wholly reassured, but Cain's friendliness was disarming. Alex wisely chose to stand back and let her do the talking, well aware that all he could successfully do here was scare the shit out of her. "Well, I did hear him yelling. What did he do this time?"

"Wouldn't pay up." The sulk was evident in Cain's voice. "Okay, so we might have destroyed the data, but it was for a good reason, honest! The Vault's research had gone wrong somewhere along the line – the entire place was filled with infectious spores. We even met what was left of some of the locals. Wasn't pretty."

"Infectious spores?"

"Something like tuberculosis," Arcade explained. "It started in the lungs, but continued to spread post-mortem, and the fungus was capable of mobilizing itself as a colony once the host was dead. I've never seen anything like it."

Angela leaned back. "That's quite a lot to take in," she mused. "I can understand why Thomas wasn't so pleased with you. You're the first group to return, after all – probably got his hopes up. I'm guessing he forgot to mention that part on the job description," she added, when Cain opened her mouth to speak. "But what I wanted to ask was this. When you were searching the vault… you didn't happen to _see_ anyone down there, did you?" An odd note of pleading entered her voice.

Cain shook her head. "We found some log entries from some of the previous explorers, but we didn't run into anyone that didn't try to eat us."

"Oh." The woman seemed to deflate. "Well, it may not be the answer I wanted to hear, but I can at least compensate you." Alex could have sworn he saw Cain's ears perk up. "The vault had to have been dangerous, and if nothing else, we know to set our sights on something else now. I just wish Keely hadn't had to die for it."

"She might still be out there," Cain pointed out, finding it prudent not to mention how they'd set the vault on fire. "I mean, um, we didn't find anyone… specifically dead. Except the plant monsters."

"Maybe," Angela conceded, not looking too hopeful about the prospect.

"So, um. You mentioned something about compensation?" Trust Cain to go straight to the caps.

"You risked quite a lot going into the Vault, and you've given us closure on that venue, if nothing else. I'm sure we can spare a hundred caps for that."

"Thank you," Cain replied, all smiles as she accepted the bag. "Really."

Angela nodded. "You've earned it, no matter what Hildern might say. Although dealing with him for the next few weeks isn't going to be easy. He's been fixated on that vault."

As Cain offered her sympathies, Alex wondered once again why everyone was so opposed to just _killing_ the guy.

0o0o0

"Well, that was fruitless," Arcade commented, shielding his eyes from the sun as they stepped outside. "Then again, _nihil novi_."

"Not completely," Cain protested, jangling her new bag of caps. Not as much as she'd hoped, but it was a start. "I mean, the original reward of a thousand would have been nice, but some _prick_ had to go and smash the data." She poked Alex in the chest, who gave her an expressionless stare in return. Well, that beat the growly thing, at least. Maybe there was hope for the guy.

…Jesus. That moment before he'd yielded, before she'd felt his rigid muscles unclench under her fingers – she was honestly afraid that she'd have to scrape what was left of Hildern off the walls. Which she wouldn't have shed any tears over, but getting out of McCarran after that would have been a _mess_. The inside of an NCR jail cell was not somewhere she wanted to find herself again, and _that_ was assuming that the soldiers didn't just open fire on them. Alex had one hell of a chip on his shoulder – she was starting to wonder if bringing him along for the ride had been such a good idea.

"Did you really have to make a scene back there?" she complained. "Alex, I'm _sorry_, but you're about as persuasive as a rabid Deathclaw. I might have actually talked him into something if you hadn't gotten all _grrr_ on him."

"I'm going to have to express my doubts on that one," Arcade commented.

Alex simply shrugged, looking distinctly unrepentant. "I usually don't work with people. When I _need_ to, intimidation does the job."

"That," and she jabbed a finger in his direction for emphasis, "is exactly what I'm talking about. Intimidation has its time and place, and you make a really good 'big stick' even if you definitely suck at the 'speak softly' half of it, but… this isn't Pre-War. I mean, I know you _know_ that, but I don't think you really _get_ it yet. People are tough. Independent. And some are just going to shoot back at you no matter how scary you are. I've already had enough lead put into my skull. Please, _please_, leave the talking to me. And try not to kill everyone that you don't like." _Because I think the Mojave might have some population issues if you do._

"…Fine," he grumbled. She dearly hoped he meant it.

"Sometimes you just have to man up and deal with the assholes, okay?" She gave him an encouraging grin, once again failing to get a response. "There are other ways to screw people over than assisted cranial surgery, trust me. I mean, we did just put a dent in his career. And he wasted a lot of time and money on it, too. Suddenly I feel a lot better about setting the vault on fire. You know?"

"I still think he should have suffered for it," Alex growled.

"Yeah, and maybe that's good and well for _you_, but then we'd have this entire base down on our heads. Not all of us can deal with that." Alex cocked his head, but didn't reply. "Think about the team here."

"Okay," he finally allowed, "but I want some say in what goes on here. I'm not just gonna follow you blindly. I'm not a dog. Order me around like one and I'm leaving."

So Alex was touchy about independence. She could see how that might have happened. He'd spent a lot of his time hunted, fighting against capture – fighting for his continued freedom, something he'd only just regained. It was useful to know; she didn't want to push a Pre-War weapon's buttons, and Alex seemed to have a _lot _of buttons. She was already pretty sure that Alex's 'strategic' input was going to consist mostly of violence, but premeditated discussion was smoother than having him randomly decide to start killing things in the middle of negotiation. Lately, it seemed like everyone was jumping out of the woodwork to be her enemies – persuading him to leave alone the ones she didn't need to kill shouldn't be too difficult, given there were so many that she _did_.

"Fair enough. Deal?" She held out a hand to shake on it. He stared at it blankly, looking for all the world like he had no idea what she meant by it. After a few seconds, he seemed to figure it out and shook it. It was an awkward gesture – his fingers were weirdly hot in hers and he was in a hurry to get it over with – but it was an agreement sealed nonetheless.

"Deal," he agreed roughly.

"Well, that's almost reassuring." Arcade cleared his throat. "So. What now?"

Cain looked around, trying to see if she could pinpoint anyone important. "I was hoping to see if anyone around here has any work. I mean, it's the NCR. They _always_ have shit they need done but never actually get around to doing. Overstretching themselves is practically their modus operandi. And yes, _then_ we can leave," she added, when Mercer gave her a hard stare.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "I thought you weren't a fan of the NCR," he commented.

She shrugged. "Hey, caps are caps."

"I can't argue with that."

They poked around the camp, asking a few soldiers to see what needed doing. Most just had mundane complaints – Cain wasn't sure _what_ the chef had done to warrant so many death threats, but it had to have been something awful – but they finally got directed to a Major Dhatri for work.

They found him near the front of the camp, barking orders to a few scrawny-looking recruits. They scurried off, and he turned to them, scowling heavily at their approach. "If it's bad news, I don't want to hear it," he warned. "And if it's good news, it had better involve dead Fiends."

"You're having trouble with Fiends?" Cain asked. She could see where this was going – and she liked it. The Fiends were raiders of the worst sort; notoriously vicious and too drugged out of their brain to reason with. Normally, she preferred a bit of sleuthing and detective work over straight-up killing, but she hadn't survived this long without knowing how to handle herself in a fight. And now she had a pre-War weapon following her around to tip the scales in her favor, if the way Alex had blitzed through Vault 22's monsters was any indication. This would probably be a good way to get him to blow off some steam, too.

"Yeah," the major grunted, lifting a cigarette to his lips. "Fuckers have been killing my men for years. Breaking others. Would love if the whole goddamn lot of them up and died, but for now, I've got three Fiends I want dead, and I don't give a damn how it's done. That interest you?"

"It might." Cain smiled inwardly, pleased at the confirmation. Outwardly, she kept her face neutral. "What names are we talking about here? And what reward?"

"The first one calls herself Violet. God knows why - the name is the prettiest thing about her, that's for damn sure. She raises dogs. Vicious things, be careful with them. Then there's Driver Nephi. He's fast and he's brutal. He's taken out a dozen of my men with a goddamn driver iron, hence the name. And that's not counting all the mercs I've sent after him. Don't get in a brawl with him; he gets in close, he's taking off heads."

He exhaled sharply through his nose. "Lastly, there's Cook-Cook. Rapist, pyromaniac, and damn good chef, if the Fiends we've captured weren't just talking out of their asses. He's the worst of the lot. He's a mad sonofabitch – he raped one of our First Recon snipers here. Tortured another. And if he isn't forcing himself on somebody, he's setting them on fire. If you go after him, give him a few bullets from me; with him, it's _personal._

"I'm not going to spin you any bullshit. These bastards aren't your common Vegas trash. They've all killed good NCR men, and plenty of mercs, too. You're not careful, you'll add yourself to that count."

Well, at least the guy was honest. That was an improvement over Hildern, at least. "I'm hoping the reward takes that into account," she said casually.

"You bet your ass it does. We're paying 250 caps a head. There's a bonus involved if you handle all three of them, but I'm not expecting you to do that." He cast her a critical look. "No offense, but I've sent better men out there who never came back. And I'd be happy to see any of them down, much less all of them. So who's it going to be?"

Cain nodded appreciatively. That would bring her up to fifteen hundred if she handled all three bounties, not counting whatever the bonus was; maybe this trip to McCarran wasn't going to be so dry after all.

"Why choose?" she asked, resting one hand on her rifle, and she was gratified by the momentary flash of surprise on Dhatri's bearded face.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," he said after a moment. "But my hat's off to you all the same. Takes balls to try that. Well, I'm just gonna pray you can handle yourself. Take those sons of bitches down."

She tipped her slightly-charred hat back. "Thanks, Major. I'll be back. Count on it."

"One last thing," the major warned as she started off. "Don't go for the headshot; try center mass. I want the heads recognizable. My superiors need proof they're dead. You bring me a head that looks like a rotten tomato, nobody's sure if it's legit, and I can't pay you the full bounty."

"Got it," Cain said. That was a complication, but not too big of one. She could work around it. It did bring up an idea – she _could _just kill a few random Fiends and try to pass them off as the leaders, because really, who _would_ know after a few gunshots – but she was pressed for caps and didn't want to settle for any partial reward when the full one would bring her so far. And with Alex and Arcade around (…okay, mostly Alex), she didn't think there'd be too much of a problem going after the real deal.

"Well, what do you say, Alex?" She flashed a grin at him. "You up for hunting some shitheads?"

At last, she finally managed to wrangle a grin back from him. It was all teeth and honestly creepy as fuck under that hood of his, but it was a grin nonetheless.

"You're on."

* * *

*Arcade's Latin; 'Nothing new'


End file.
